


My Scars, They are Your Scars

by NyxEtoile



Series: Tales From the Tower [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. References, Angst, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Mentions of Past Assault, Plot, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovery, Slow Build, Some Humor, Some Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 04:11:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 61,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1764943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyxEtoile/pseuds/NyxEtoile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <img/>
  <br/>
  <i>“Sergeant Barnes,” she said quietly. His gaze snapped to hers. Blue eyes, she noted. Pale and very focused, like a predator. “My name is Dr. Newbury. I’m sorry I startled you. . .I know people in white coats have done terrible things to you for a long time. I’m not like them. I’m the physician here. If you get hurt or ill I’ll treat you. But I can’t help you if I don’t understand you.”</i>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <i>She hadn’t looked frightened. He’d looked right into her eyes, hand wrapped around her wrist, her pulse pounding against his fingertips. And all he’d seen was resignation. He’d seen that in the eyes of his missions before. Usually someone he’d been hunting a long time. Warriors at the end of their rope. It hadn’t belonged in the eyes of a female doctor, safe behind the walls of Stark Tower.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So despite the fact I have 3 other active stories posting here I started this one. Because my muse is insane and on steroids, I guess. I think I may have a soft spot for emotionally damaged anti-villains with shaggy hair. I have no other excuse for this.
> 
> My first Winter Soldier story. Self-betaed, so mistakes are mine.

When the Triskelion fell Dr. Amanda Newbury was on the twenty second floor, in the infirmary, running a stress test on an agent. When the intercom crackled to life and Captain Roger’s voice echoed in the room they all stopped and looked up, even the agent on the treadmill hopped his feet to the side so he could listen.

_Don’t let control take the place of freedom._

The silence in the infirmary was deafening. Amanda scanned the other people in the room. Two nurses, one she’d known two years, the other new to SHIELD. The agent on the treadmill. Two in beds, one being stitched by her veteran nurse, the other recovering from a blood draw. They were all eyeing each other with a mix of suspicion and dread. It was an awful moment. Not the worst of her life, not by a long run. But terrible, nonetheless.

There was the rattle of gunfire in the distance. The sound broke the spell. The agent getting stitched glanced at the one recovering from his blood draw, whispered, “Hail Hydra,” and reached for the instrument tray next to his nurse. Amanda dropped her clipboard, grabbed the gun of the treadmill agent off his pile of clothes and shot the Hydra agent before he could touch her nurse.

The man on the treadmill vaulted over the handles and tackled the third agent to the ground before he could reach the doors. When he was subdued he turned back to Amanda, who was aiming his gun at him. They had a second tense moment, eyeing each other. Amanda didn’t consider herself a warrior. She was not a field agent. She stayed in her lab or infirmary and dealt only with the aftermath of violence. 

But she had learned, a very long time ago, to trust her instincts. It went against everything she had ever learned about logic and evidence and facts. But guts had saved her far more often than thinking ever had.

So she took her finger off the trigger and put the gun back on top of the agent’s clothes.

He smiled and stepped towards the pile, pulling his shirt back on. “I need to get out and help the Cap if I can. Will you be all right in here?”

She nodded, glancing at her nurses. “We’ll stay and offer medical help for as long as possible.”

“I would suggest locking the doors and hiding out, ma’am.”

That was probably good advice. Logical. But again, she had to go with her gut. “I’m a doctor. People will need help.”

The agent studied her. She wished briefly she remembered his name. It was at the top of his chart, on the clipboard she had dropped. She did half a dozen stress tests a week and had never really taken note of the agents’ names. She wondered how many of them had been Hydra.

 She wondered how many of them were now dead.

The agent seemed to come to some sort of decision and nodded. “Good luck, ma’am.”

“You too, agent.”

He gave her an odd little salute and left, closing the door firmly behind him.

Her nurses were staring at her. Amanda swallowed hard and walked to her desk, opening the drawer that held her own side arm. “You can leave. My decision is not yours. He was right, it is likely safer to run.” She checked the magazine to ensure the gun was loaded, then slammed it back into the butt. “I think it’s safe to assume that SHIELD no longer exists. We no longer have jobs. There is no reason for you to stay.” She forced herself to look over at the two women. “You’re both excellent nurses. If we survive, I will be happy to write glowing recommendations for you both. I’m sorry this is how our working relationship will end.”

Without a word, Stacey, her nurse for two years, ran to the door and fled. Amanda wasn’t terribly surprised. Stacey had only recently gotten engaged. She had a great deal to live for. She looked at her remaining nurse, Tiffani Myers. She’d come on board all of four months ago. A decade younger than Amanda, she was pretty, blonde, and looked like she should be named Tiffani.

The girl tipped her chin up. “Granddad was an agent under Peggy Carter. He’d tan my hide if I ran now.”

Amanda felt a brief smile cross her face and nodded. “Right. Pack a supply bag, focus on wound care. I want to be able to bug out at a moment’s notice. If you have a weapon, arm yourself.” Without a word, Tiffani went to the supply cabinets to obey.

In the end, they left before any wounded made their way to them. Once the helicarriers started coming down it was obvious the building was no longer safe. The race through the halls was terrifying, especially with an unarmed Tiffani at her heels. But everyone else they saw seemed more interested in escaping than attacking.

They set up triage a few blocks away, on the grass of a park. They had only the two go-bags they’d packed. Emergency crews brought wounded to them and ambulances lined up on the street to take as many as they could. EMTs resupplied her as best they could, in between taking wounded away. Amanda took charge early on, running between the rows of bodies on the lawn. Tiffani held her own, even pressing water and granola bars into Amanda’s hands when she could.

They were still there when crews found Captain Rogers by the river. Amanda was the first to examine him, ensuring he was stable for the drive to the hospital. He was just another patient in a long, long line of wounded she saw that day. Looking back, she was sure some were Hydra. Would have tried to kill her had they the strength. In the moment, though, it didn’t matter. She was a doctor and people were hurt. She fixed them and sent them on their way.

She spent the next three days in her apartment, television off, ignoring her phone. She was probably in some sort of shock, but felt she’d earned it. She was in no mood to watch the Triskelion fall over and over on the news. Nor did she want to talk to her sisters or father about what had happened. She’d left them all messages the night of the fall, letting them know she was alive. She felt that was sufficient until she was ready to rejoin society.

She gave herself a week. A week seemed like a reasonable amount of time to handle such a thing.

On day six, someone knocked on her door. Which was odd, because she lived in a doorman building that required one to buzz visitors up. Thinking it was a neighbor, she opened the door to find Maria Hill on the other side.

Her initial reaction was to close the door in the woman’s face. She was no longer a SHIELD employee and no longer took orders from her. They weren’t friends by any stretch of the imagination. Amanda had met her less than a dozen times in the five years she’d been with SHIELD. Two of those had been hiring interviews.

Hill put a hand on the door, as if sensing her intent. “Give me ten minutes and a cup of coffee. I won’t need more than that.”

Amanda stared her down another moment, then stepped back to let her in. “I only have tea.”

“If it’s black and caffeinated I’ll pretend not to notice.”

She sat Hill at her kitchen table, not bothering to clear off the several days accumulation of take-out boxes, and set the kettle on the stove to boil for tea. She rested her butt on the edge of the counter and crossed her arms, watching Hill expectantly.

“I’ve secured a job with Stark,” Hill said with no preamble. “I’m here to extend you. . . an umbrella. As I’m doing with other former SHIELD agents I know and trust.”

Amanda wasn’t sure she’d ever actually qualified as ‘agent’ given she hadn’t attended the academy or finished her field training. That was not the surprising thing about that sentence, though. “You barely know me. How can you possibly trust me?”

“You worked eighteen hours in a field triaging and treating wounded after the carriers fell.” Hill’s gaze was steady. “That’s not the actions of a traitor.”

She wasn’t entirely sure Hill’s instincts on such things were reliable, considering the frankly staggering number of high level agents in the Hydra files. But, as she wasn’t a traitor, it was probably a moot point. “I’m a medical doctor. What use does Stark Industries have with me?”

“Are you familiar with the Avengers Initiative?”

“No. I’m illiterate and have lived in a box the last two years.” The kettle whistled and she took it off the heat, pouring hot water into two mugs. She dropped tea bags into the water. “I assumed it was as dead as SHIELD.”

“Mr. Stark has decided to keep it running. Out of the Tower. We need an in-house physician.” Amanda set the mugs on the table and went back for milk and sugar. “Dr. Banner has been doing it up till now and would like to remind us all that he is not ‘that kind of doctor.’ You are.”

Amanda sank into the seat across from Hill and wrapped her hands around her tea mug. “No offense, but are we expecting that to be a full time job? What am I supposed to do with myself when no one is saving the world?”

“ _The Potential Uses of Super Soldier Serum in Chronic Disease Treatment_.” Hill rattled it off like a child reciting a rhyme.

“My thesis?” She added sugar and a healthy dose of milk to her tea. “If you actually read it, I’m flattered.”

“I didn’t. Banner did. He thinks you’re onto something. Well, twenty-something you was onto something. We’re not interested in creating super soldiers. Rogers wouldn’t let us even if we were. Curing auto-immune disease? Easing symptoms of childhood malnutrition? Everyone is very interested in that.” Hill was watching her intently. Whatever she saw made her smile. “You’ll get a state of the art infirmary and lab. Assistants. Nurses. Almost unlimited funding. All you have to do is patch up superheroes now and then.” She sipped her tea. “There are all kinds of ways to save the word, Dr. Newbury.”

It was an odd sensation, having your dreams handed to you quietly over tea. If she had to compare it to something, it was very much like Christmas morning as a child. Coming out to see the tree lit up, presents spilling out from underneath it. It wasn’t a sensation one often felt as an adult.

She managed to sip her drink, despite her shaking hands. She put the mug down firmly and looked at Hill. “I have a nurse I want to bring in.”

_Six Months Later_

“We are not a halfway house for brainwashed and crazy people, Rogers.”

“Really? Because a good chunk of our roster kind of meets that criteria.”

Amanda ignored Hill and Captain Roger’s heated whispers, focusing on the file in her hand and the man on her table.

Sgt. James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, aka The Winter Soldier. Captain Rogers had spent a great deal of time trying to find him since the fall of SHIELD. Somehow, he had coaxed his old friend to return to Avengers Tower with him. And now he was sitting on an exam table in her infirmary, while Rogers and Hill had a debate about redemption and safety.

Amanda decided to go about her work as if everything was normal. First order of business for a new recruit of unknown condition was a full physical and work up. She didn’t think there was much point in putting a partially cybernetic super soldier on a treadmill, but she could at least get the basics.

She put together what she needed for a blood draw and stepped towards him. In a move too fast for her to follow, his arm - the left, metal one - snapped forward and his hand closed around her wrist. His grip was tight and she staggered, moving with the motion of his hand so he wouldn’t break her arm.

Behind her, Hill cursed and Rogers cried out, “Bucky!” 

Barnes glanced at them and his hand tightened a little. She waved at the others to be quiet and miraculously, they obeyed, though she was certain Hill had her sidearm out.

She glanced down at her arm, the metal fingers completely encircling it, just above the knob of bone at her wrist. She’d never considered herself particularly delicate. She’d been a chubby, asthmatic kid and a tall, awkward teenager with too wide shoulders. Her father’s hearty farmer genes had run strong, making her big boned and sturdy. With one sister pretty enough to be on TV and another built like their delicate, bird-like mother, she had generally felt like the ugly duckling who never quite reached swan, but merely a relatively nice looking duck. And all of that had been before she’d acquired glasses and a facial scar worthy of a mob enforcer. Dainty and feminine she had never been. It took a cybernetic hand on a ninety year old super assassin to make her feel fragile.

Her mind went back to med school and a discussion on the tensile strength of bones. Almost every anatomy class she’d attended, someone had asked some version of “How much force does it take to break a bone?” Like so much in medicine, the answer was usually, “It depends.” Depends on the bone, the kind of pressure, the position of the breaker and the breakee. Depended on the health of the person. So many variables for such a seemingly simple thing.

She didn’t know how much force he could exert with that arm, but she’d heard he could punch through car doors and rip out steering wheels. She was fairly confident he could crush her radius and ulna if he really wanted to.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she said quietly. His gaze snapped to hers. Blue eyes, she noted. Pale and very focused, like a predator. “My name is Dr. Newbury. I’m sorry I startled you. The needle is empty, I’m not trying to drug you. I need to take a blood sample, two vials.” She lifted her left hand to show him the vials, one with a blue top, the other red. His gaze flickered to look at them, then back to her face. “I want to run a standard blood panel to assess your general health. I also want to run a more complicated panel to try to determine what you were give by Hydra to alter your physiology.”

She thought his hand had loosened slightly. “I know people in white coats have done terrible things to you for a long time. I’m not like them. I’m the physician here. If you get hurt or ill I’ll treat you. But I can’t help you if I don’t understand you.”

It might have been the word ‘help’ that reached him. Or the attempt at empathy. Maybe she just had an honest face. Whatever it was, he slowly released her and held out his other arm, palm up, so she could precede.

Behind her, Rogers blew out a breath. Amanda heard the distinctive sound of a gun sliding back into a holster. She ignored everyone in the room but her patient. He sat perfectly still as she tied on the tourniquet and took the vials.

“I’d like to take more vitals,” she told him, carefully labeling the blood. “Nothing invasive. Blood pressure, temperature, heart and lungs. If you’re not up for it I can forego it.”

“I don’t think it’s a good-” Rogers started.

“It’s fine,” Barnes interrupted, still watching her. His voice was soft, a little rough, not at all what she’d expected. For some reason, she’d expected him to have an accent. He sounded very. . .normal.

She completed the rest of her tests with as much speed and efficiency as she possessed. He sat still and silent as the tomb for it all. She paused to make notes on her clipboard and found herself glancing at his left shoulder, where flesh transitioned to metal. It looked remarkably seamless, with minimal scarring. “Is there any pain?” she asked him quietly, voice pitched so Rogers and Hill couldn’t hear.

He looked at her sharply, a flicker of surprise registering on his face. Then he simply shook his head. She wasn’t entirely sure she believed him, but she just nodded and looked back at her notes. “That’s everything then. You’re free to go.”

Without a word, he tugged his shirt back on and slid off the table. Rogers stepped back so he could pass him on his way to the door.

Amanda debated internally a moment, then called after him, “Sergeant Barnes?” He stopped and turned his head slightly, but didn’t look at her. She plunged ahead. “I’m here seven days a week and am on call when not in the office.” The members of the Avengers had floors to themselves near the top of the Tower, but Stark had also designated a couple floors as temporary housing for employees moving from other areas. Amanda had moved into one of the apartments six months ago and had, so far, found no reason to leave. Having her nearby was convenient. Superheroeing, she’d learned, didn’t happen on banker’s hours. “If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to come by. You won’t have to start over with a stranger.”

He didn’t respond verbally, just gave a little nod and continued walking. The look Rogers gave her, however, redefined gratitude for her. Hill just shook her head and followed the men out, leaving Amanda alone.


	2. Chapter 2

_”I still don’t know who the hell Bucky is._

“I _do. And I want to help you figure it out._

He’d known Steve was following him weeks before he’d made himself known. It had been oddly comforting, having a shadow. His memories were a tangle of faces and feelings and vague images. As much as he wanted to remember, he also wanted answers. For what had been done to him. Why and by who. He wanted someone to answer for it. Answer to him. He couldn’t even remember if he had been a man who believed in vengeance. But the weapon they had turned him into certainly did.

Then Steve had found him, in a dark, dirty bar full of rough men somewhere in the Czech Republic. The trail had gone cold and he was trying in vain to drink enough vodka to actually drown his sorrows. 

Then Captain America sat next to him, in all his blond, all-American, boy-next-door glory, to try and convince him to give up and come back to the States. The arguments themselves hadn’t been all the persuasive. The war and the commandos and whatever they had been to each other was a long, long time ago. A mess of images he still couldn’t trust, let alone sort out. Steve wanted him to be Bucky again and he didn’t even know if that was possible.

Still, he was alone and missionless for the first time in what was apparently almost seventy years. Steve was offering him a purpose. A home. Maybe vengeance could wait while he figured out who, exactly, he was avenging.

So he found himself in New York. In a building taller than any they would have imagined when they were kids. Or so Steve claimed when they arrived. Steve treated him like a friend. A normal person. Patiently explaining anything he didn’t understand. Bucky thought it had to be exhausting, like babysitting the largest kindergartener in the world.

He didn’t know when he’d started thinking of himself as Bucky.

He was standing in Steve’s living room, looking out at windows at the city spread before him. He tried not to pick out sniping spots, tactical escape routes or places to hide bodies. Tried. Seventy years of training were hard to shake. Steve was talking. Something about finding him clothes and a phone if he wanted it and maybe a haircut. Clothes might be nice. Properly fitting clothes, not ones he was using to hide. Steve had showed him pictures, he’d dressed well when they were younger.

Maybe it would help the way others treated him. Right now everyone was frightened or distrustful of him. It wasn’t that he blamed them, given who he was and what he’d done. It was still. . . discouraging.

Ironically, the person who seemed to accept him the most, other than Steve, was Romanov and he’d apparently shot her twice. She’d been a weapon once, too, she’d told him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to start a former brainwashed assassin club with her, but a sliver of acceptance was better than nothing.

Well, there’d been one other who hadn’t looked at him with fear.

“Did I hurt her?” he asked, interrupting Steve’s patter.

He looked over at Bucky, squinting a little at the light coming from the window. “Hurt who?”

“The doctor. Yesterday.” He remembered her name. But if he let Steve know he remembered it then he might read something into it. And there would be a Discussion. Bucky tried to avoid those.

“Dr. Newbury? She’s- she’s fine, as far as I know. I didn’t get an email that she was out sick or anything.”

The fact that Steve used words like email casually actually kind of amused him. He just nodded, hoping that would be the end of it, but Steve persisted. “Why?”

Dammit. He did not want a Discussion. He stared out the window, squinting down at the pedestrians dozens of stories down. With a scope, he could pick off any one of them. They’d never know what hit them, or where the shot had come from. 

Steve was waiting for an answer. His expectant silence was almost as bad as the nervous talking.

“I grabbed her on instinct,” Bucky said. “She was trying to help.”

“So you feel. . . guilty?”

He turned a little to look at Steve then. “If I didn’t feel things I wouldn’t have come with you.”

Steve smiled a little. “Right. Sorry. We can- we can go check on her if you want.”

Bucky shook his head sharply and looked back out the window. “It’s fine.”

She hadn’t looked frightened. He’d looked right into her eyes, hand wrapped around her wrist, her pulse pounding against his fingertips. And all he’d seen was resignation. He’d seen that in the eyes of his missions before. Usually someone he’d been hunting a long time. Warriors at the end of their rope. It hadn’t belonged in the eyes of a female doctor, safe behind the walls of Stark Tower.

He held her for perhaps thirty seconds, forty on the outside. In that time he’d studied her, as he would a potential target. He’d been more Soldier than Barnes, sitting on that table, and the training had taken over. Female. Tall. Fit but not strong, average to slightly above average stamina. Oval face, broad cheek bones. Brown hair pulled back in a bun. Hazel eyes behind wire framed glasses. The left pupil was slightly dilated, possible vision problems. Facial scar on the left cheek, approximately four inches long, from the jaw to lower eyelid, likely connected to vision issues. The scar had been the only anomaly; the thing that didn’t fit. There was a history there, something that had made her unafraid to stare death in the eye.

If he’d had to kill her he’d have done it from a distance. She was smart, that had been obvious in her gaze, her speech. She’d be no match for him physically, but she was clever, resourceful. Too much trouble to take up close.

_“I know people in white coats have done terrible things to you for a long time. I’m not like them.”_

She’d been so calm. As if they were chatting over coffee. As if he wasn’t one squeeze or wrist twist from snapping her arm. The tone, as much as the words, had sent the Soldier back wherever it was he hid. He was used to orders, sharp and intense, or fear and pleading. He didn’t know what to do with calm and reasonable.

Steve was talking again. About clothes and shopping and credit cards. Bucky forced himself to listen, even if he couldn’t properly feign interest.

Two days later he found himself standing outside the infirmary. Steve had been dragged into a meeting with Hill, Stark and two people Bucky hadn’t recognized. And by dragged he meant he had literally been walking down the hall with him when Stark had appeared from somewhere, looped an arm around Steve’s shoulders and steered him into a meeting room. Usually when Steve was busy he occupied himself in the gym or in his room in Steve’s apartment. This time they’d just finished at the gym and he didn’t want to lock himself in the apartment again. He wasn’t entirely sure he was allowed out of the Tower unsupervised, though.

_“If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to come by.”_

Not entirely what she’d meant, he was sure. But at the moment she was the only person available who might conceivably welcome his company. So he made his way to the infirmary and stared at the door for a while.

Finally, he turned the door handle and stepped inside. Dr. Newbury was seated at a long, low table, writing notes with one hand while she flicked through documents on a her Stark computer tablet with the other. She looked up at the sound of the door and he saw surprise register on her face. “Sergeant Barnes. Is everything all right?”

He glanced around the room, taking in all the doors, exit routes, and possible weapons. No one else was here or in any off the adjoining exam rooms. He looked back at her. “Steve is in a meeting.” He paused and she waited, obviously expecting him to continue. “I thought it might be quiet here.”

Surprise flickered over her face again, chased by a faint smile. She nodded, then indicated a chair farther down the table. This one was wheeled, with a high back and arms. He gripped the back of it and dragged it over to the wall next to the door. He didn’t like the idea of sitting in the middle of the room, with open air at his back.

He situated himself with the best view of the room, door, and her, then sat.

“I’ll need to ask you to leave if I get a patient who requests it.” It sounded like a warning. He nodded to show he understood and leaned back in the chair, resting his elbows on the arms and intertwining his fingers loosely.

She watched him a moment, then gave a little shrug and went back to what she was doing.

Bucky watched her hand move across the page and her fingers flick and settled into himself. She had music playing very softly somewhere. It sounded like jazz, maybe some big band stuff. Nothing he consciously recognized, but it felt oddly familiar. He had been a sniper, in the war, before the Soldier. He had always had the ability to sit still and wait. He so rarely got the opportunity. Steve liked to keep him busy when sometimes all he wanted was to be bored.

So he watched the doctor take notes and listened to her old fashioned music and just let himself be still.

*

It was like working with a ghost in her office.

For five of the last eight days Amanda had had Sergeant Barnes in her lab while she worked. The first time, he’d told her the Captain was in a meeting and he wanted somewhere quiet to sit. He had not bothered to offer excuses any of subsequent visits. Times two and three he’d hooked a questioning brow at her and waited for her nod before taking his spot by the door. After that, he didn’t even bother with the check-in, just sat in the chair that now lived in his preferred spot.  
 He’d scared the hell out of Tiffani the first time she’d walked in and he was there, despite not moving a muscle. Amanda was fairly certain if he’d managed a hello she’d be looking for a new nurse.

“What is he _doing_?” she’d hissed after cornering Amanda in the storage closet.

“Sitting. He says he likes the quiet.”

“But it doesn’t - he doesn’t bother you?”

“On the contrary. He’s very quiet.” To an almost inhuman degree, in fact. He didn’t shift of fidget. He barely breathed, at least not audibly. She actually thought a ghost might be louder, what with the chain rattling and spooky noises.

Tiffani, for all her proud SHIELD-legacy stoicism, remained unnerved by the visitor and opted to find things to do in the auxiliary lab when he was there. Since there were several experiments going on there that would only be improved by careful monitoring, Amanda didn’t mind. She was close enough to be on call in the event of an emergency.

Which left her alone, with a former Hydra assassin at her back, while she studied his blood-work and filled in reports.

“You don’t talk.”

She tried not jump, but was fairly certain her shoulders twitched. She had her glasses up on her head, right eye peering into a microscope. Had she moved any more she would have jostled something. “You said you came here for quiet,” she replied, moving the slide ever so slightly. “Talking to you would be counter productive.”

Silence stretched again and she figured it had been an anomaly. She lifted her head and tipped her glasses down to take notes.

“What are you doing?”

“Studying the structure of your white blood cells.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re different from normal white blood cells and if I can replicate that change I can revolutionize anti-serum development.” She glanced over at him to find him watching her impassively. No confusion on his face, but no real interest, either. “If you’re feeling chatty, I do have a question.”

His face shuttered, going completely blank. “What.”

“Why don’t you buy some new clothes?”

He looked down at himself, then back at her. “What’s wrong with my clothes?” It was asked with no curiosity at all. As if he’d simply said it because he knew it was the expected response.

“They’re Captain Rogers,” she replied, going back to her microscope.

“How can you tell?” That had had inflection. Interest. 

Progress.

“You’re built differently. He’s broader in the chest and narrower at the hip. Your shirts are too big and your pants are too tight. It can’t be comfortable. I’m sure he’s given you some sort of stipend, even if you’re not officially on the Avenger payroll. Enough for a few outfits, at least.”

He didn’t respond for a long time. Long enough for her to finish her notes and move onto other work. Long enough she considered the topic dropped.

“I don’t want to go shopping.”

Oh, for Godssake.

“Then buy things online. No stores required.”

Pause. “You can do that?”

She turned and looked at him again. His head was tilted quizzically, which was, by far, the most emotion she had gotten out of him in their acquaintance. “Yes. I hate clothing shopping. Other than shoes I do the majority of it online.” He stared at her blankly. She reminded herself he had spent a great deal of time in cryo over the last seventy years. He never seemed thrown by anything, no matter what equipment she had out. And she knew he had used modern - even advanced - weaponry. The fact that he could probably build a bomb out of the things in her lab but didn’t know how to order something on the internet was depressing in a way she couldn’t express.

“Right. Okay.” She stood and went over to her desk, returning with her personal laptop and a cloth tape measure that lived in her drawer. She set the laptop up on a clear spot on her table. She pulled up several men’s clothing sites in different tabs and stepped back. “Click on the different names in the bar here. I tried to cover a bunch of styles. If you see things you like click whatever button says ‘Add to cart’ or the like.” She held up the tape measure. “The sites all have size charts you can follow to figure out what size to order. I don’t suppose you have a credit card or anything.”

“I memorized Steve’s.”

She forced herself not to grin at that. “When you’re done check out and follow the instructions. Should be straight forward but let me know if I can help.” With that, she left the laptop open and went back to her work.

It took a few minutes for him to stand and walk to the laptop. She was fairly certain he watched her the entire time. Eventually, though, he hunkered over her computer and the quiet was broken by the occasional click the the track pad as he looked at one link or another.

Amanda hid a triumphant grin and peered into her ‘scope again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In an attempt to wrangle the many (many) stories I'm currently posting, I've given myself a schedule to stick to. _Scars_ will be updating regularly on Thursdays for the foreseeable future.
> 
> Also, I've dusted off my old Tumblr account to use as a resource for readers to get in touch. I'll be posting comments, announcements, metas, behind the scenes info and possibly polls/questions and sneak peeks. Plus general fandom reblogs. Just getting started now but content should pick up soon. Follow me at http://nyxetoile.tumblr.com.
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> Thanks for all the comments and kudos. Now that I'm hitting my stride I'll try to respond more regularly.

Three days later she was on one of the higher floors, loitering outside a meeting room. She had been reduced to stalking to get her job done. These were the things they never mentioned in medical school. Hunting executives like a big game poacher.

The door opened and Tony Stark stepped out. Amanda fell in step next to him, nudging some hanger-on out of the way. “Mr. Stark, you’re overdue for a physical.”

He waved a hand without looking at her. “Put it in my calendar.”

“It’s in your calendar. It has been in your calendar four times and you’ve canceled or blown it off every time. Your next appointment is tomorrow at eleven. I expect you to be there.”

Now he did look her way. “I’m fine. Feel great.” He thumped his chest. “Fit as a fiddle.”

“Mr. Stark-”

“My friends call me Tony.”

“Mr. Stark. You are less than two years past major heart surgery, not to mention the heavy metal poisoning, shrapnel, and significant stress you put yourself through prior to that. You are over forty. You need a regular physical.”

“Did Pepper put you up to this?” They reached the elevator door and he hit the button before turning to face her. “Really. I feel fine.”

“And wouldn’t you like data to confirm your feelings? You’re a scientist, Mr. Stark, you’re supposed to like data.”

“I’m not that kind of scientist.” The elevator doors opened and he stepped inside, obviously under the impression he’d won that one.

Amanda slammed a hand over the door so it wouldn’t close. “Mr. Stark, if you don’t come for your physical, I will drug your coffee and perform what tests I can on you while you’re unconscious. Then, you will come to strapped to a treadmill while I put you through the most thorough stress test you’ve ever experienced.”

He studied her a moment. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Dr. Banner has already offered to help. Apparently, he owes you from the cattle prod.” Stark tipped his head back, suddenly looking at her as if he’d only just noticed her. “Unconscious patients don’t get lollies, Mr. Stark,” she added.

“Appointment’s tomorrow, you said?”

“At eleven. The infirmary. Floor forty.”

“I’ll see you there.”

She let the door go and it closed on his face. She still felt vaguely wound and huffed out a breath. Maybe she’d just take the stairs.

Someone feel into step beside her and an instant later Barnes said, “Yes. Definitely Howard’s son.” 

“If that’s hereditary I’m going to aim an X-Ray at his crotch when he comes in for his exam.” She turned her head to look at him - he’d come up on her left side - and was surprised to find him in black denims and a charcoal grey crew neck that actually fit him. “Your new clothes arrived,” she noted as he held the door for the stairs open for her.

“Expedited shipping,” he said, following her downstairs. “Steve approved.”

“You look nice,” she told him before she could think about it. She was glad he was behind her, she didn’t want to know what his reaction to that might be. As it was, she was fairly confident she was blushing.

She shoved through the door for the fortieth floor and headed to the lab, Barnes still on her heels. “Is it strange to be around the grown son of a man you were friends with before said son was born?”

He waited patiently while she unlocked her infirmary door. “My memories of Howard are vague at best and mostly supplied by stories from Steve. I don’t actually spend much time with Stark. Their similarities are more. . . an instinctive impression. Like your music.”

It was, by far, the most words she’d heard from him at one time. “My music?” She walked around turning lights on while he settled in his chair.

“You play old music. While you work. I don’t recognize it, but it’s familiar.”

Her hand paused on the sound system controls. It had never occurred to her he’d noticed the music, let alone that he’d enjoyed it on some level. She turned the music on to the jazz station she preferred and ticked the volume up a little. 

He watched her move around the room, waiting until she’d sat at her desk and opened her email before asking, “Do you really give out candy to patients?”

Amanda reached down and opened a drawer, pulling out a mason jar stuffed with lollipops. His brows went up a little and she swore he was fighting to keep his neutral expression from turning into a smile. “I didn’t get one.”

She stared at him. Even he looked surprised at the tease. Without a word, she reached into the jar, pulled out a butterscotch one and tossed it at him. He caught it one handed and inspected it a moment before unwrapping it. She watched from the corner of her eye as he tasted it experimentally. He looked at it again, made a ‘well, why not?’ face and stuck it in his mouth.

The Winter Soldier liked butterscotch lollies.

In the next few weeks, it became very apparent that the Winter Soldier had a butterscotch lolly _problem_.

“You can buy your own,” she informed him as he dug through her jar hoping to find one more. “I buy them at a candy store off Times Square.”

“Stealing yours is more fun,” he said, completely neutrally, sorting through chocolate and caramel ones. She’d known him over a month now and still wasn’t entirely sure how much of an affectation that tone was.

“You could try one of the other flavors,” she offered.

“I’ve found one that works. I don’t like change. Ah.” He held up what had to be the last one in the jar, a faint, triumphant smile skirting across his face.

She put the jar away as he retreated to his chair. She dug out her phone and made a note to go to the store after work for more, before getting up to take her seat at the lab table. “If you always had a sweet tooth I imagine you didn’t get to indulge it much.” He didn’t respond, not that she had expected him to. She pulled up Tiffani’s experiment updates on her tablet and started going through them.

Half an hour later he spoke. “Can you do anything about my memories?”

Her fingers paused on the screen. Captain Rogers had asked her something similar, weeks ago, when it had become obvious that she wasn’t afraid or distrustful of Barnes. At the time she hadn’t known, but she had done some research since, just for such an occasion.

She put her tablet down and turned to look at him. “I would need to run some tests. A CAT scan, an EEG. An MRI would be useful, but with your arm I don’t think it’s a reasonable option. These would give me more information on how your brain works. From the files Hydra kept, I know they used a combination of electro-shock and drugs for what they called your wipes. It’s likely that most of your time as the Soldier is gone. The wipes would have destroyed the memories before neural paths were created. There may be retrievable patches, depending on the length of time between wipes. The memories before that are more likely. They had time to form neural connections. Pathways we could open up.”

“How would you open them?” He was watching her with his arms crossed, lollipop stick hanging out of his mouth like a cigarette. She was vaguely reminded of James Dean.

“Electroshock,” she admitted. His face darkened and she hurried on. “It wouldn’t be like it was with them. There would be a mild sedative and very, very low voltage. It would be painless. I can give you some reading. . .” The look on his face indicated that all the reading in the world wouldn’t make it okay. She sighed and smiled. “Memory is overrated, anyway. You’re probably better off having Captain Rogers fill in the missing pieces. He’s just as reliable.”

“It’s difficult to talk to him about things. He gets. . . very eager.” He tipped his head back, rolling the stick from one side of his mouth to the other. “What do you mean it’s overrated?”

“Have you ever heard the phrase, every story has three sides; my side, your side and the truth? Memory is incredibly easy to influence. It’s a remarkably haphazard process, making memories. The right stimuli early on and you can believe something completely different than what actually happened.”

“What kind of stimuli?” Interest had started to tinge the monotone, which she considered a good sign.

“Oh, almost anything. Say - say you went to a club with some friends and over the course of the evening you danced with three women, a blonde and two brunettes.”

“What if I prefer blondes?”

She still wasn’t entirely sure what to do when he teased her. “Brunettes are statistically more common. Two brunettes and a blonde, that’s what happened, that’s how you remember it. However, a few nights later you’re telling tales with your buddies and one of them, who was at the club with you, says ‘No, no. There’s was a fourth one. A redhead.’ He insists there was a fourth girl.”

He pulled the lolly out of his mouth, it was half gone. “Why is my friend so interested in my dance partners?”

“Maybe he saw a guy that looked like you with a redhead. Or saw one of the brunettes and misinterpreted her hair color. Maybe he’s trying to make you look good, take the journey with me here, Barnes.” His mouth quirked a little. “He swears it was four, so you start to think ‘Well, I had a lot to drink, we were there pretty late, maybe there was a fourth one.’ You half convince yourself there was a redhead, right before you left. The next time you talk about the club, you mention her. Now the story is two brunettes, a blonde and a redhead. You kind of remember there being confusion on that, but don’t let it get in the way of a good story. Months later, you’re all looking to go out, and someone suggests going to that club. You chime in with how you danced with four ladies there once. Now the memory is set. Two brunettes, a blond and a redhead. Is that what really happened? No. But it’s how you _remember_ it, so now it’s the truth. All because your friend made a mistake early on in the forming of the memory.”

He mulled on that, working his candy with particular fervor. Amanda went back to her reports, glancing up when he winged the empty stick at her waste bin. “It would be nice to find some memories that don’t come from Steve.”

“They made movies about you. Well, the two of you.”

“I’ve seen the news reels,” he said with palpable disdain.

She looked over at him. “No, I mean real movies. With actors and production values. Lots of them.”

He stared at her a moment. “You’re serious.”

“You guys were superheroes before we had a word for it, Barnes. Of course they made movies and things about you. Hell, I think there was a musical in the nineties.” He looked utterly horrified. For the first time she clearly saw Bucky Barnes and not the Soldier.

So, once again, she got up and dug out her laptop and set it up on the table. It took a few seconds of hunting, but she downloaded a couple of the old fifties movies, including one that focused a lot on Captain America’s early years. Once they’d buffered sufficiently she started one up and gestured grandly to the laptop to encourage Barnes to come closer.

He did, hesitantly, skeptically, settling his chair in front of the laptop as the Universal Pictures logo came up on screen. She left him to it, going back to work and smirking at the series of snorts, sighs and other noises that came from him as he watched.

*

The movies were surprisingly helpful, though not in the way the doc had probably expected. They didn’t jog any memories or confirm any of the vague flickers he had. But they sure as hell pissed him off when they got stuff wrong.

“And then, after I’ve fallen off the train to my apparent death, I stagger into camp, just in time to join you on your last, triumphant raid on Hydra.”

Steve stopped pounding on the punching bag he was using to stare at Bucky. “You are making this up.”

It gave Steve and him a rather entertaining topic of conversation, too.

“I’m not. We take down Hydra together, end the war and ride off in a jeep, into the sunset.” He rammed a few fast punches into his bag, enjoying the sound the bag made as it swung. “No airplane. No encased in ice. Happy ending.”

Steve tipped his head back. “That’s almost criminal in its inaccuracy.”

“Doc said there was a period in the fifties in which all war movies had to have aggressively happy endings. Something about nostalgia soothing old wounds.” He stepped away from the bag, stopping its swing with his left hand. “There are more accurate ones made later. She hasn’t let me watch them yet.” He could feel Steve watching him and stifled a sigh. There was a Discussion coming, he just knew it.

“You spend a lot of time down in the infirmary with Dr. Newbury.”

And there is was. “It’s quiet down there. And she’s not scared of me.”

“Is that - if people are making you uncomfortable-”

He tried not to smile. He knew enough from the movies to know that Steve being protective of him was a trip to opposite-world for the both of them. “I make other people uncomfortable, Steve. Not the other way around.”

Steve sighed a little and turned back to the bag. Discussions were easier with something to punch. “Not Dr. Newbury?”

“No,” he said quietly. He still hadn’t figured out why. She was a mess of contradictions. Cerebral and studious. She got involved in her reports and experiments and seemed to tune him out entirely. Even when he was throwing popcorn at her laptop screen in annoyance. But she was utterly fearless, from standing up to Stark to looking him in the eye when he grabbed her arm. He didn’t think anyone else in the building would have critiqued his clothing and then promptly introduced him to online shopping. 

What had started as a place to hide when Steve was busy had become a habit he almost. . . enjoyed. And there was very little in life he let himself enjoy. Sometimes he watched her bent over her microscope or scowling at her tablet and he wanted to just _do_ something to her. Pull the clip out of her bun or steal her glasses off the top of her head. Just to see what she would do. It was an urge that came from somewhere deep inside. An echo of who he used to be, perhaps. A memory that had found a path to the surface.

“Was I good with women?” he asked Steve before he thought better of it. Steve gave him a sharp look and he grit his teeth a little. “I don’t want you to read into it. I don’t want a lecture on attachment or women or whatever is going through your head. I’ve been watching these movies and they tend to make me sort of a comic relief, especially after you’ve had the serum. So, I’m just curious. Was I good with women?”

Steve waled on the bag for a few moments, then responded. “Yeah. You were really good with women. Girls loved you. And you weren’t comic relief but you were funny.” He grinned at him. “You even talked girls into dating me.”

Bucky smiled a little at that. “Damn. I must have been charming.” He dodged the towel Steve threw at him and watched the other man start unwrapping his hands. “You don’t have to worry about me,” he said quietly. Steve glanced at him questioningly. “You can go on missions again. Leave me here. I’ll be all right.”

“Look, I haven’t been going on missions because there haven’t been any I was needed on.”

“Romanov is right, you’re a terrible liar.”

That got a crooked smile. “I may have been taking some extra desk duty while you got settled.”

“Consider me settled.” Steve still looked skeptical. “I’m not going to wake up and remember everything. Neither am I going to wake up and kill everyone. Whatever it is I’m doing is going to take time. You hovering isn’t helping.”

He could tell Steve didn’t like it, but he nodded in acceptance. “I’ll let Hill know.” He paused, tearing the last of the tape off his hands. “Someday you can come on missions, too. If you want.”

Bucky tried to picture that. Being part of a team. Helping people. Working with Steve again. It felt. . . strange. But not bad. “I think I’d like that.”

Steve smiled widely and nodded. “Good.”

Doc had her laptop set up and waiting for him when he got down to the infirmary. She didn’t even look up when he entered. “You’re in for a treat,” she told him. “I found a bootleg of the musical I told you about.”

Amid the complete and utter horror, he thought, _Yeah. Definitely not afraid of me._


	4. Chapter 4

The musical, while bizarre and vaguely uncomfortable ( _”Do you think they intended to make Steve and I look like lovers?” “It is musical theater, Barnes._ ) he still found preferable to the more modern movies. They tended to be grittier, focused more on the horrors of war and the tragedy of his and Steve’s lives.

The battle scenes in one particular film - apparently, it had won an Oscar - made him nervous in a way he hadn’t felt since Steve had brought him in. It was probably some form of PTSD flashback and he made a mental note to tell Steve never to watch it. He was so unsettled that when Doc flung her pen across the room with a frustrated grunt he actually flinched, hand going to his hip in search of a weapon.

“Sorry,” she muttered, grabbing her head in her hands a moment. “Sorry, sorry.” She ran her hands over her hair, taking the clip out and twisting a new bun before refastening it. Then she stood abruptly. “I need lunch. Do you want lunch? There’s a diner down the street.”

His heart was still pounding from her startling him. He didn’t manage to reply until she’d peeled her white lab coat off and gone behind her desk to dig out a grey peacoat. “I - I don’t know if I’m allowed out of the Tower alone.”

“You won’t be alone. I’m with you.” She rooted through her purse a moment before slinging it on her arm.

“I don’t think you count if I snap and decide to start shooting.”

“I’ll dose you with the shot of Phenobarbital in my purse. You’ll be down in three seconds.” She opened the infirmary door. “Come on, Barnes. Diner food. Grease. I’ll buy you a milkshake.”

Still vaguely flustered, he closed her laptop and stood, following her down the hall to the elevator. When they hit the street he regretted not going back for a jacket. New York in December was a level of cold that bothered even him. Doc glanced at him as they walked and seemed to realize he was underdressed because she unwrapped her scarf and draped it over his neck. It cut through some of the distress, for reasons he couldn’t articulate. 

He kept pace with her as they strode down the street. She was almost as tall as he was so there was no need for him to slow or shorten his stride for her to keep up with him. He liked that, also for reasons he couldn’t really articulate.

“You walk like a predator,” she told him when they got stuck at a cross walk. He looked at her, then down at his feet, frowning. “Don’t get self conscious. It was an observation, not a complaint.”

He had no idea what to say to that and was saved from having to think of something by her stopping at the door of a diner and yanking it open. The waitress greeted the doc by name and tried to wave them to an empty booth towards the back but Doc shook her head and pointed at one near the windows. The waitress waved and shrugged and Doc lead him over, sinking into the booth and shrugging off her jacket.

It wasn’t until he’d slid into his seat that he realized she’d chosen them a booth with a view of the front door, kitchen and back exists and most of the occupied restaurant. He didn’t think most non-combatants would think of something like that. She tucked her jacket next to her on the booth bench and rubbed at her face with both hands, tucking her fingers under her glasses to press at her eyes.

The waitress appeared next to the table, putting two menus and a glass of iced tea on the table. “What’ll you have to drink, handsome?”

“Coffee” He didn’t take his eyes off the doc, waiting for the waitress to walk away before speaking again. “They know you here.”

She was plucking sugar packets out of the little caddy on the table. “I eat here three or four times a week.” She glanced at his face and something must have shown because she wrinkled her nose. “I don’t cook.”

“Aren’t doctors supposed to eat healthy?”

“Doctors are supposed to do a lot of things,” she muttered, dumping an ungodly amount of sweetener into her tea. “Sorry I startled you in the lab,” she added. 

“What happened?”

She sighed. “I shouldn’t tell you. Doctor client privilege.” He waited, silent, while the waitress dropped his coffee off and left again. If he’d learned one thing in his years with the muzzle it was that people liked to fill silence. Based on her look of exasperation he thought she might know what he was trying to do.

Didn’t stop her from talking, though. “Let’s say I have a. . . difficult patient and after reviewing his recent results I’m going to have to have a very frustrating conversation with him.”

“It’s Stark, isn’t it?”

She put her face in her hands with a groan. “Yes, it’s Stark.” Bucky smothered a grin and sipped his coffee, waiting. “Some of his test results had worrying numbers. Now I have to convince Tony-fucking-Stark to change his diet and go on blood pressure medication.”

His brows went up at the curse and he filed it away with the other little, contradictory things he knew about her. “Weren’t you yelling at him in the elevator about this appointment weeks ago?”

“Yeah, he blew that one off.”

“Did you drug his coffee?”

She finally dropped her hands and offered him a wry smile. “No. Worse. I told Pepper.”

He smiled back, just a little. The waitress came by for their orders. When that was done they lapsed into silence. He liked that silences with her were comfortable. As comfortable as he got, at least. Other people sat in silence with him and it was tense, awkward. They spent so much time in her office, quiet save for her music, that the silence seemed natural for them.

The food was good, as far as he could tell. Steve told him the food now was much better than what they’d eaten as kids. He didn’t remember that. Barely remembered eating as the Soldier. Mostly MREs and energy bars, then. Milk, when he could get it. He imagined that was a ghost of his old life, his enjoyment of fresh, cold milk. And Doc and her lollipops had unearthed his sweet tooth. It was hard, sometimes, to enjoy food the way other people did. Usually for him it was just fuel to keep going.

He scanned the restaurant as he slowly worked on his soup. Half empty. It was late for lunch and the cold weather probably kept people in. There was a family of three on the other end of the room from them and as his gaze skimmed over them he noticed them glance his way several times. Often enough it became a pattern.

Doc looked at him sharply. “What’s wrong? You stiffened up.”

Later, he would analyze the fact she had noticed that. “There’s a family over there. They keep staring at me.”

The inner ends of her eyebrows dipped down over her nose and she drank her iced tea, turning as if to flag down the waitress. She took a look at the family, then back at him. “Seriously, Barnes? They’re just tourists.”

“I know when people are looking at me, Doc.”

“Why on earth would they be looking at you? It’s not like they’d recognize you, even if they’d seen you before. You don’t exactly look like the Soldier anymore. What with the normal clothes and lack of visible weapons or face mask thing.”

“They’re looking at me.” He could hear that his voice had gone deep and tight, like a growl.

She sighed a little and looked behind her again. He saw her tighten this time, before turning back to him. “Barnes, look at the little girl’s arm,” she said softly.

He frowned at her, then obeyed, studying the child sitting with the family. It took an embarrassingly long amount of time to notice the three fingered, robotic style, prothetic sticking out of her sleeve. His breath came out of him in a rush and he looked back at Dr. Newbury. “You think they’re looking because-”

“They see someone else with a prothetic arm? Yeah, I do.”

“What do I do?”

“Try smiling,” she said, gesturing with fingers. “Stop looking scary.”

He wasn’t entirely sure that was possible, but he tried, aiming a small, awkward smile the girl’s way. She smiled back, hesitantly and a moment later she and her mother stood and started walking towards him.

He cast a panicked look at Doc. “They’re coming this way. I can’t-”

She reached across the table and put her hand on his, covering the metal. “Barnes, look at me. I don’t care that you were the Soldier. I don’t care who you were before that. Right now, all you are is the person who’s going to tell that little girl that just because she’s _different_ doesn’t mean she’s _broken_. You can do this.”

Bucky held her gaze a moment, then looked over at the girl as she reached his side. For a split second he saw Steve, small and sickly, getting pounded on by guys twice his size. Because he’d been different, too.

_”Sometimes, I think you like getting punched."_

A sharp spike of protectiveness went through him and he tried smiling again. “Hi.” The girl hung onto her mom’s hand, but smiled shyly. 

He reached out with his cybernetic hand and touched a metal finger to one of hers. “We match.”

She grinned and turned the hand over to touch his. “I’m Piper.”

“I’m Bucky.” The girl’s mother was watching all this with a teary smile, but he kept his eyes on Piper.

“My arm got sick and the doctors had to take it off,” she told his quietly.

“Mine-” He cast about for a kid friendly excuse that didn’t involve brainwashing and Nazi experiments.

“My friend was in a war,” Doc said, coming to his rescue. He cast her a look he hoped expressed gratitude.

“Do you miss it?” Piper said. “I don’t remember, so Mom says I can’t really miss it. But I want it back.”

Bucky swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat. He slid off his bench so he could kneel down to her height. “Sometimes I wish I had my arm back,” he admitted. “But then I remind myself that this makes me strong.” He made a fist with the metal hand. “And so does yours,” he told her.

Piper looked a little like she might cry. But she nodded and stepped closer to hug him. He froze a second, tossing a glance at Doc. She mimed hugging and he grit his teeth, sliding his arms around the little girl to hug her.

By the time he got her to let go and go back to the table with her mom, both Piper and her mother were crying. Doc was dry eyed, but the look she was giving him made him avoid her eyes.

Once she’d paid their bill and were back out in the cold, she broke the silence. “You did good.” He grunted acknowledgement. “Did you mean what you said?”

He shrugged. “I suppose. I don’t think about it. I don’t remember being without it. Like her.”

There was a pause, then he felt her poke the arm. “What kind of sensation do you have in it?” He looked over at her and she scrunched up her nose. “I have been extremely restrained in my questions with you. I’m a doctor, allow me my curiosity.”

She did have a point. Other than their initial meeting she’d never peppered him with any sort of questions about his arm or memory or anything else she probably would have liked to know more about. “I feel pressure. I know how tightly I’m holding something and I know when I’m being touched. But it’s not the same as with skin.”

He could almost see more questions bubbling up in her and he braced himself for an interrogation. But then she seemed to swallow them and just smiled. “You better hurry up and finish watching you movies. I won’t be in the office after next week.”

He didn’t know why that caused a flash of fear in him. He could survive just fine without seeing her. “Where are you going?”

“Home for Christmas. Just for a week. Longer than that and my sisters and I regress to adolescence and murder becomes exponentially more likely.”

Hadn’t known she had sisters. Come to think of it, he didn’t know much of anything about her past or family. “Where is home?” he asked. That was a normal question, didn’t sound like information gathering.

“South Carolina.”

“No accent.”

“Ah, well. Med school at Stanford and residency in Seattle. The accent faded pretty quick. Catch me a day or two after I come back and I’ll sound properly Southern for you.”

He pulled the door of the Tower open and held it for her. “When will you be back?” He kept his voice to the Soldier’s neutral tones.

“The thirtieth. Stark throws a New Year’s party that puts Caligula to shame. Not to be missed.”

That sounded far less enticing than she had probably intended. A loud, crowded party with a bunch of people who didn’t really like him was not his idea of a fun evening. Didn’t matter, he probably wasn’t invited anyway.

*

Amanda’s week with her family went about as well as it always did. Some fun. Some traditions. A couple of petty competitions. Prying questions about her work - which she couldn’t answer - and her love life - which she didn’t want to answer. All in all it had been a relief to get back to the Tower - which she had begun to think of as home - and her life. 

Stark’s New Year’s party was everything she’d been told it would be. She got to see Hill have a drinking contest with two of the Stark Industries accountants. Tiffani and the lab assistants (she would start remembering their names soon, it was her resolution) took over a corner and started some sort of incredibly complicated Chart ‘O Hotness of all the eligible men in the company. An algorithm was involved. Amanda hung over their shoulders for a while and generally agreed with the assessments, though she would have put Banner a bit higher. She supposed to girls their age he registered as ‘old’ which was vaguely depressing to think about on the cusp of a new year.

Sergeant Barnes hadn’t been on the chart at all, nor was he at the party. It was a little disappointing. She felt he would have been fun to lean on the wall and play mean girls with.

 She left before the ball dropped, going down to her apartment to change into her pajamas and drink tea. She watched Times Square go crazy on television. Her bed called to her soon after and she decided she was old enough to be at peace with being old and boring and went to sleep with the city still celebrating around her.

Barnes was waiting for her at the infirmary door, shoulders braced on the wall, arms and ankles crossed. The international position of feigned indifference. She nodded at him as she reached the door, lowering her head to unlock it. “I missed you, too, Sergeant,” she said as the door swung open.

He didn’t dignify that with a response, just followed her inside and sank into his usual seat. “How was the party?” he asked as she got settled at her desk. 

“Not as exciting as advertised,” she said. “I left before midnight, though, so I could have missed the orgy.” No reaction. Someone was in a mood. She decided to ignore him, sorting through her obscene amount of email.

Halfway down the list she found a clue as to his grumpiness. “They’re going to start sending you on missions.” She peered around her screen to look at him.

“So they tell me.”

Her brows drew in. “You aren’t pleased.”

He scowled at a blank spot on the wall. “I don’t know what I think. I wanted something to do.” He stirred a little. “They said you need to clear me physically before they’ll assign me.”

It was SOP before a new agent went on mission. Or after any major injuries or breaks of more than six months. She had done his intake exam less than three months ago, though, so if one wanted to get technical he was already cleared. She supposed someone was covering their ass and making sure all the boxes were checked. But she was not going to put a man with a perfectly understandable dislike of exams through an unnecessary one.

She dug a form out of her desk and pulled up her intake files on him. “You feel any different physically than you did when you first came here?”

He frowned in her general direction now. “No.”

It took less than a minute to fill the form out based on her initial report. She signed and dated it with flourish and held it out to him. “Enjoy your mission.”

He stood slowly and took it from her, scanning it with suspicion. “That’s it?”

“I’m an extremely efficient doctor,” she told him, going back to her email. He lingered in front of her desk a few more heartbeats, looking from her to the form and back. Then he nodded sharply and headed for the door, presumably to hand the form in and get the wheels moving. “Sergeant?”

He froze and turned slowly back to her. She looked up from her screen and smiled a little. “I’ll keep your chair open.”

That earned her an honest-to-goodness smile, small and hesitant though it was. He nodded again and left.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains descriptions of various injuries sustained in a fight as well as an attempted (non graphic) rape by a bad guy. I believe the language is mild enough to not be a trigger but wanted to make sure readers were warned.

_Three months later_

Amanda tipped her head back against the head rest of her seat and closed her eyes, trying to use the sound of the Quinjet’s engine as white noise. It wasn’t working, but maybe if she appeared serene and unconcerned it would become true.

_”I am not a field agent.”_

_“You’re not going as a field agent. You’re going as a doctor.”_

They were flying into Eastern Europe. Romania, she thought. The briefing meeting had gone by quickly and she wasn’t used to having to pay attention. It had been somewhere woodsy, she knew that. There’d been a lot of trees in the pictures.

Intel had come through indicating there was a Hydra cell hidden in the foothills there. Further research indicated they were likely using locals in another round of super soldier testing. Which was why she was on this plane.

SHIELD scientists had been trying to replicate Abraham Erskine’s work, on and off, for the last seventy years. She wasn’t the first and she certainly wouldn’t be the last. They had all come at it from different angles, with a variety of goals. Hydra, both in SHIELD and independently, seemed obsessed with it. As far as anyone knew, Sergeant Barnes was their only success, and even they hadn’t seemed to understand exactly what had been done in that warehouse in Germany during the war that had let him survive all these years. Still, they kept trying.

Amanda was currently considered the leading expert on the super soldier serum and its effects. At least the leading ‘good guy’ expert. So she had been handed a mission packet, some black tactical clothes and shoved onto a plane. She supposed she should be grateful they’d given her time to get her sidearm and medical bag on her way out.

She heard footsteps coming down the aisle and cracked an eye open. Sergeant Barnes sat across from her, staring either at her or at the wall just over her shoulder. He and Captain Rogers were both coming along, on the assumption that if there were any successful experiments running around they’d be needed to take them down. Barnes was covered in two knives, three guns and some sort of baton thing that she was pretty sure was electrified. And those were just the weapons she could spot on him. She had to admit, her lizard brain was very happy to have him along. Always good to have the biggest predator on her side.

Rogers appeared next to her seat, hanging off a cross beam on the ceiling. “We’re about twenty minutes from drop off. We’ll be hiking into the woods to find the camp. You up for about a forty minute walk?”

She presumed that was directed at her. She stuck out her foot, clad in well loved hiking boots. “I’ll be fine.”

He nodded and gave her a little smile before shifting to the other side of the aisle to chat with Barnes. She closed her eyes again. Twenty minutes was plenty of time for a nap.

They hiked through thick overgrowth, silent save for their foot falls. In addition to Amanda and the super soldiers, there were three former SHIELD agents, two of whom she recognized by face if not name. She was the only non combatant and had been placed smack in the middle of the pack, with Rogers at the front and Barnes in the rear. She had her 9mm sidearm on her thigh, but had been ordered rather sternly not to draw unless necessary.

If there was any sort of warning, Amanda was completely unaware of it. One moment they were trudging through the Romanian woods, the next the trees in front of them exploded and the air was torn with the rattle of automatic gunfire. Someone grabbed her, but she was already moving, ducking into underbrush away from the sound of the guns. She heard Rogers shout something, then another volley of bullets, likely her team returning fire. There was another explosion, off to her left and she staggered, ears ringing.

She was completely turned around, but knew enough to get away from the fire. She got her feet under her and ran further into the bush. After only a dozen steps she felt the ground give out from under her and she was falling down a steep incline. She felt something strike her chest, then her left arm got caught on something else. Gravity kept her moving, pain shooting through her. She blacked out before hitting the bottom.

The first thing she was aware of when she came to was the absolute agony her arm was in. For a moment she just curled up around the limb, breathing in short, shallow breaths. She no longer heard the gun fire, but she had no idea how long she’d been out or what had happened to the rest of her team. It was still light out, but far darker than it had been when they’d landed. Closer to twilight than lunchtime.

Very slowly, she braced her right hand on the forest floor and pushed, sitting up, gritting her teeth at the little stabs of pain. She scooted back, bracing herself against a tree trunk. “Okay,” she whispered. Time to tap into her emergency training. Assess the patient.

Her left arm hurt like hell. She ran her fingers along the forearm, found minor scrapes where her sleeve had torn, but no protruding bones or deep lacerations. Her hand appeared to have been caught or crushed. She tried wiggling her fingers and bit her lip to keep from crying out. Broken, definitely broken. She grit her teeth and did manual manipulation. Her thumb and first finger had some motion. The rest weren’t worth touching.

Right, moving on. Right arm was fine. Legs worked. She remembered something striking her chest, so she gingerly examined her ribs, finding a painful spot on the left side. She took a couple deep breaths. Nothing broken. Could be bruised ribs, but most likely just soft tissue damage. She lifted a hand to check her head and realized her glasses were gone. She swiped a hand over her face and it came back dotted with blood. A glance around her revealed her glasses and med bag. The glasses were twisted, lenses shattered.

“Shit,” she muttered. Closing her left eye brought the world into better focus, but lost her depth perception, which she would likely need trying to get out of here. She thumped her head back on the tree behind her. “Shit.”

She allowed herself a couple minutes of self pity. Then it was time to get her hand splinted. She got her feet under her and crab walked towards her med bag. Her hand had barely touched the canvas when there was a rustle in the bushes to her left. She swiveled her head, right hand scrabbling for her side arm.

A soldier crashed out of the trees, holding an automatic rifle and shouting at her in a language she didn’t understand. A second joined him and she lifted her hand away from her gun. “I’m a doctor. Doctor.” She gestured the the red cross on her bag. “Medic. Doctor.”

There was more rustling behind her and she risked turning to look. Two more soldiers stood there, surrounding her. She caught the red of a Hydra logo on the sleeve of the one closest and her heart sank. Well, that explained the ambush on the road.

One stepped closer and put the muzzle of his rifle to her forehead, still talking in their language. “Doctor,” she said, calm as she could. She pointed to herself, the caduceus on her sleeve and the bag at her knees. “Medicine. Doctor.”

He stared at her intently, gun not wavering. He look down at the bag and seemed to notice the cross. The gun lowered slowly and he reached down, hauling her upright. He took her 9mm away and handed her her bag and gestured with his gun. “Go. Go.”

Well. Prisoner was probably better than dead. Probably. She slung the bag over her shoulder and walked the direction he’d pointed, falling into step behind one of the other soldiers. She presumed they were headed to the base that had been the goal of this little adventure in the first place. Though she was fairly sure it was now a bit farther away than it had been, what with her fall down the ravine. At least they weren’t trying to make her climb it.

She wasn’t sure how long they walked. Her arm and hand hurt and aches and pains all over her body began to make themselves known. She had a major blind spot on her left which made walking in the brush difficult. She tripped several times, jarring her hand when she caught herself. Pain greyed her vision twice, but she bit her cheek and kept moving forward. Prisoner was better than dead. 

When the twilight thickened the shadows to the point that even the soldiers couldn’t move easily anymore, they gestured for her to stop. Two of them went off to scout ahead, leaving her with the others. A few minutes later, they came back, had a conversation in their language and changed direction slightly. They found a clearing and the men started unloading their gear, obviously preparing to settle for the night.

Amanda hovered where they left her, not quite willing to sit. She wouldn’t be able to get up again easily with all her aches and pains. She wasn’t quite ready to be that vulnerable. She did let her bag slide down and hit the ground.  
 The men glanced at her, sizing her up. One said something to the others, laughing in a way that made her uncomfortable. The other three didn’t respond, one waved a dismissive hand at him. She tensed, and the talker, who was the only one still holding his rifle, stepped towards her. She backed up a step instinctively. He grinned at her, said something, and reached out and touched her breast.

She slapped the hand away and glared. “No.” That was pretty universal, no matter what language barrier they had.

He scowled and grabbed her chin, yanking her towards him, off balance. His mouth came down on hers in a rough, sloppy kiss. She clawed him with her good hand, knee coming up at the same time. She missed his crotch, slamming into his upper thigh.

It still must have hurt, because he gripped her hair and hauled her back, slamming her into a tree trunk. Her arm flared with pain and she almost toppled. He got in her face, hissing something threatening between his teeth. She spit at him and he lifted the rifle, clocking her across the jaw with the butt.

Amanda saw stars and felt nausea rise. She grit her teeth, fighting down the urge to vomit and looked back at her attacker. Behind him the other men seemed content to ignore the current goings on. 

He lifted his rifle and pointed it at her face, cradling it in one arm. He held her gaze as his other hand grabbed her breast again and squeezed roughly. When he slid it down towards her crotch she reached up, grabbed the barrel of his gun and slammed it back into his face. His nose crunched, blood spurting out of the gash she’d made in the bridge.

Keeping hold of the gun she turned, twisting the gun out of his grip. She turned it, found the trigger with her finger and loosed a short burst of automatic fire into his torso. The recoil jarred her broken hand terribly but it was worth it when he dropped to the forest floor like a marionette with cut strings.

The other three stared at her for a heartbeat, before moving towards their weapons. Before they could reach them, or she could lift the rifle in their direction, a shadow detached from the woods around them and slammed into the closest one.

He moved like a blur, vicious and efficient in his attacks. One of the soldiers got off a short burst of fire before being taken to the ground, neck snapped. Then her rescuer stopped and lifted his head to look at her. For an instant, she didn’t think he really saw her. If her stolen rifle had been pointed anywhere but the ground she might have become his target, as well. Then clarity snapped in and his blue gaze locked with hers. Relief flooded her, mixing with adrenaline to create a high worthy of a heroin needle. 

Her breath came out in a shaky rush and she attempted to smile. “Sergeant.”

One corner of his mouth tilted up ever-so-slightly. “Doc.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going on vacation next weekend and will be in the car for most of Thursday. Scars will (hopefully) post Wed night instead.
> 
> WARNING: This chapter includes non graphic description of a previous assault.

She looked like hell. Her left hand was mangled, arm held against her chest protectively. Her jaw was swelling, blood trickling from a busted lip. Her glasses were gone, cheeks marred by tiny scratches. Her hair had been in a tidy french braid when he’d last seen her. Now it was half unraveled, loose tendrils hanging everywhere.

No one, other then Steve, had ever looked so happy to see him.

Bucky bent to start stripping weapons and ammo off the dead Hydra soldiers. “You all right?”

“I have three broken fingers, a major contusion on my ribs and my sight is impaired.” It was said with clipped, doctorly precision. “What about yourself?”

He glanced up to find her awkwardly searching the man she’d taken down one handed. “I’m fine,” he responded.

“Would you tell me if you weren’t?” She looked up to catch his gaze again. “There’s blood on your leg.”

Frowning, he looked down to find a new rip in his right pant leg, a bullet graze bleeding sluggishly beneath it. The pain hadn’t registered in the heat of the fight. “It’s fine.”

“Just because an infection won’t kill you doesn’t mean it won’t slow you down. You should let me look at it.”

With her broken hand and impaired vision. Doc had guts, he’d give her that. He watched her take an extra clip for the rifle and a vicious hunting knife off her attacker and tuck them away in her tac pants. “Not here,” he said when she straightened.

She seemed to accept that as a compromise and stood, cradling the assault rifle in her good arm. “One of them has my gun,” she said, moving towards him.

He went back to his search and she shuffled her rifle around and picked up her bag of medical supplies. He found a 9mm shoved into the waist band of one the the Hydras and held it up. At her nod, he checked the magazine and handed it over, butt first.

When she took it, he saw her left hand come forward as if to do her own mag check. She grimaced when the fingers wouldn’t cooperate and shoved the gun into her thigh holster with a frustrated sigh. Bucky finished his disarming, strapped on what weapons and ammo he could use, and inclined his head to get her to follow him. She fell into step behind him without a word, right hand on her rifle, ready to bring it up and fire.

He had found her and the soldiers less than an hour ago, after tracking them from the ambush spot. There had been no tactical opportunities to rescue her before the soldiers had started to settle for the night. Assuming she was as safe as she had been, Bucky had gone to find his own rest spot. Two minutes she’d been out of his sight. Then he’d heard her shout and come back in time to watch her get a rifle to the jaw and take down her attacker with brutal efficiency.

When they reached the smaller grove he’d spotted for his own campsite he unloaded some of his gear while Doc sank down to the forest floor. “You have any rations in your bag?”

She shook her head. “Just water.”

He hadn’t thought so. None of them had been planning to be out overnight. They could survive without a meal or two, but it would affect his reaction time. Plus, with her injuries, she could use some energy. “Stay here.” She frowned at him and gave a pointed look at his leg. “When I get back,” he promised, trying not to sound exasperated.

She just sighed and he decided that was close enough to assent to head out. He was sure to keep within screaming distance of her as he hunted. He returned less than an hour later with two rabbits to find the campsite cleared and a small fire going, tucked far enough into the grove it wouldn’t throw light too far. He didn’t know if he was more impressed that she’d done it with one hand or that she’d known to do it at all.

He put the rabbits down next to the fire and sat, stretching his injured leg towards her. Without a word, she dragged her bag closer and started inspecting the wound while he gutted and skinned their dinner. She managed to clean, seal and bandage his wound, using only her right hand and left thumb, head tilted to see out of her right eye. She looked different without her glasses. Softer. The scar stood out more, but so did her eyes and cheek bones. 

“How bad is your eyesight? Without the glasses?”

She didn’t look up when she answered, packing up the sealant and bandages she had out. “Left eye is around 20/240, which is beyond legally blind. Right eye is just shy of 20/20. I’d actually see better just keeping the left closed but lack of depth perception is a hazard out here.”

He finished the rabbits and found sticks to use for holding them over the fire. She had pulled out a plastic splint and was unsuccessfully trying to splint and wrap her hand. He set up his cooking sticks, leaving her to it, until he heard her mutter, “This would be easier with both hands.”

Apparently, she wasn’t going to ask for help. He wiped his hands off and crouched next to her expectantly. She hesitated for a breath or two, then stuck her hand out. She walked him through splinting it, having to order him to do it tighter twice. He was very conscious of hurting her. When he was done she murmured a thanks and he nodded, moving over to turn the rabbits.

When the meat was cooked he handed her one and sat near her to eat his. She managed one-handed eating with a remarkable amount of grace, even nodding a bit after the first few bites, as if approving of his cooking. Well, she’d said she was no chef.

He didn’t know what to make of her. He was used to her being tough in the Tower. She stared down just about everyone. Even strong-armed Stark on occasion. Her subordinates seemed to have a healthy respect for her. He knew she was brilliant, or she wouldn’t work for Stark. But that was all in her comfort zone. Surrounded by sterile white walls and charts and microscopes. He remembered thinking that if she was a mission he’d have to take her out at a distance. He was starting to think even that had grossly underestimated her.

Admittedly, his opinion on womanly toughness was likely 70 years out of date. He vaguely recalled Peggy Carter and her spine of steel. The memories he had of his own mother were of a quiet, sweet woman who couldn’t have handled killing a spider, let alone a trained soldier. Romanov was a fighter worthy of any army, but she had had a lifetime of training and conditioning. He tried to picture Ms. Potts crouching in the woods eating rabbit or Dr. Foster disarming and shooting a man. He supposed they could. There was nothing stopping them. But he doubted they’d do it with the same efficient competence.

Doc’s scar stood out, stark in the firelight. He was sitting on her blindside, something she seemed to have arranged intentionally. He didn’t examine what that might mean. He did think about the resigned look in her eyes when he’d grabbed her the day they met. The look of a warrior finally meeting her death.

She was almost done with her food when he asked, almost despite himself, “What happened to you? Your face, your eye?”

She froze, fingers peeling some meat off the ribs. Her shoulders slumped a little and she looked over at him. “Do you know what Doctors Without Borders is?” She waited for his nod and continued, “I volunteered with them after I finished my residency. Decided I was tired of hospital politics and was going to change the world.” She chuckled a little. “I was in Africa. In a little village. Soldiers came through, looking for kids to recruit, supplies to steal. I’d seen them before, they usually left medics alone. They’d take supplies, but you always wanted to keep friendly relations with a doctor. One of the men didn’t get the memo. He came in the tent, saw me and - we tussled, knocked my equipment over. I ended up on the ground with him on top of me, his knife in my face. He told me I could fight or I could relax, either way I’d be screaming by the end.”

She blew out a breath. “He kissed me. I bit his lip. He cut my face and kicked me in the stomach, which happened to slide me over to where some of my instruments had fallen. Scalpel to the femoral and carotid arteries. He never knew what hit him.” Obviously no longer hungry, she put her food down and wiped her hand off on her pants. “The other survivors and I had to walk to the nearest aid station, a couple of days away. By the time I got there my wound was infected; it spread to my eye. I was sick a long time. When it finally cleared up my vision was impaired and I decided to find a safer way to save the world.”

Bucky had no idea what to say to that. He didn’t think even Steve would have known. This was not listed in etiquette books, he was sure. Finally he said, “You’re very strong. To have handled it so well.”

She gave him her wry smile. “Yeah, well. Dad was an Army Ranger. Desperately wanted a son but ended up with three girls. Mom died before they could give it a fourth try so he did his best with what he had.” She tossed a few twigs into the fire. “My middle sister, Becca, is the outdoorsman. She’d have rigged up some sort of pot from a log, dug up some roots and made a stew.”

“You’re the weapons expert.” It wasn’t a question. He’d seen her handle the rifle, seen her hand go to check the mag. That was instinct, ingrained.

So he wasn’t surprised when she nodded. “I think he was surprised when I went into medicine. I was so good at killing things.”

Silence reigned after that. Bucky banked the fire as much as he dared, hoping to keep the cold and predators at bay. They were in no way equipped for the early spring chill and Doc was at risk of shock with her injury. Taking the hint she tossed her rabbit carcass away and settled herself on her right side, facing the fire, head pillowed on her supply bag. She looked at him as he arranged himself to keep watch. For a moment he thought she might say something, but in the end she just smiled a little and closed her eyes.

Trust was a funny thing, something he wasn’t used to. When he’d been the Soldier he’d had teams who helped him. Hydra agents of various nationalities. He supposed they’d trusted him to some degree. To lead them, to not turn on them. But it wasn’t the sort of trust he encountered now. Steve trusted him implicitly, apparently willing to overlook everything that had happened between them and go on faith. Stark and the other Avengers accepted him to various levels, as far as he could tell. Enough to let him stay. Enough to put him on a mission. But he didn’t imagine any of them would actually be surprised if he snapped and tried to kill them all.

The doc kept him in her blind spot, ate food he gave her, slept while he was awake. She’d told him about her past, something he suspected wasn’t common knowledge. It was trust of a different kind. He didn’t have a word for what it was. But for a woman who had been hurt as she had, who faced the world with a hard shell and sharp spines, he expected it didn’t come easy, or often.

He woke her at dawn and waited while she slowly sat up, wincing and gritting her teeth. Her sleep hadn’t been easy and he imagined her hand hurt badly. She’d jarred it a few times, turning in her sleep, jerking awake with a soft sound every time. He handed her water and watched her drink it. When she’d gathered up her bag and rifle he offered her his arm so she could pull herself to her feet. She didn’t say a word, but the look she gave him expressed gratitude as well as any verbal thanks.  
 Her bag hadn’t had a sling in it, so she rigged something up with the straps of the bag and rifle to hold her arm to her chest. She was probably going to hurt herself if she had to swing the rifle up, but he didn’t think it would be a problem. There had been no signs of other Hydra teams all night. He didn’t know what the situation would be at the base once they reached it. But instinct based on things he couldn’t remember told him Steve would have handled it. Somehow.

 They scattered the remains of the fire and started walking, Doc to his right and slightly behind him. He was in her blind spot again, which was likely a tactical move on her part. She tripped on roots a few times until he started wordlessly pointing them out. Then her gait became smoother.

The base was above them, at the crest of the ravine Doc had fallen down when they were attacked. Walking to the end of the ravine to the point where the incline was gentle enough to climb had turned their forty minute hike into over a day. They reached the edge of the ravine after a couple hours walk. If the debrief he’d gotten before leaving New York was correct, then the base was almost directly above them. The incline wasn’t exactly smooth, but should be walkable, more or less.

He looked over at Doc. She had a look of grim determination on her face and he felt an odd pang for her. She was tough, but there was a difference between tough and trained. Her hand was broken, her face and body bruised up and she couldn’t see. She had to be exhausted and now he was asking her to climb a hill. And he could tell from the look in her eyes she was going to do it, without a complaint. Probably hurt herself worse in the process.

Hesitantly, he said, “I could help you.”

She huffed air through her nose and he saw her jaw clench. He let her wrestle with whatever her pride was telling her. Then she nodded and shifted the rifle to her back. He moved to her right side and she looped her arm around his shoulders. They were roughly the same height, so it wasn’t as awkward as it could have been. He tried to find a place to put his arm that wouldn’t hurt her ribs, but eventually gave up and just plowed forward.

Alone, he probably could have scrambled up in less than a minute. If she’d been uninjured he probably could have picked her up and done it just as fast. But he was trying not to hurt her or jar her arm and it ended up being a rather graceless ascent. He was pretty sure that in trying to be gentle he’d caused her more pain than if he had just hurried.

At the top of the rise he let her go and she sank down onto her rear, breathing roughly and hugging her injured arm to her chest, drawing her knees up protectively. She was holding his metal arm in her other hand, tight enough it probably would have hurt if it had been flesh and blood. He crouched next to her, trying to remain impassive. “We’re almost there.” She nodded, blowing out another breath. He cast about for something to distract her. “Why do you keep me in your blind spot?”

She lifted her gaze to his, eyes shiny with unshed tears, pain tightening the corners. “I keep you between me and anything I can’t see that might want to kill me,” she said in a remarkably even voice.

His mouth twitched. “What if I want to kill you?”

She smiled, showing teeth. “Don’t suppose it would matter if I could see you or not.”

He almost laughed. Her breathing had evened out and she gave him a little nod so he stood, letting her use his arm to haul herself up. She resettled her arm in its straps and followed him towards where he believed the base to be.

They caught sight of it not ten minutes later and he waved for her to stay back while he slipped forward. He didn’t immediately see any guards and when he got closer he spotted their Quinjet and Steve standing on the gangplank, directing the other agents, who were carrying things into the plane. Bucky went back for Doc and together they walked into the gates.

The look on Steve’s face was priceless. Bucky had an odd sense of deja vu, though there was no way of knowing if it was based on anything or not. Steve met them at the base of the jet’s gate, gaping. “I thought you were dead,” he said as they reached him.

A flicker of memory hit Bucky like a blow and he grinned. “I thought you were smaller.”

Steve stared, brows high on his head. Then he grinned and stepped forward to hug him, slapping his back firmly. Bucky was too surprised to respond in time, but found he didn’t mind the embrace as much as he would have a few months ago. At the least, he didn’t have the urge to grab his arm and twist him off.

Stepping back, Steve noticed Doc for the first time. “Doctor Newbury, are you all right?”

She ignored the question to ask her own, “Did you find any prisoners? Were experiments being done?”

Steve’s face fell. “Yes. But, apparently they were unsuccessful. We didn’t find any survivors.”

Her face gave nothing away. Bucky didn’t know if that was natural stoicism or that she was pushed so far to her limit that letting herself feel it would tip her over the edge. She lifted her good hand and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “If they have any salvageable research. . .”

“We’re loading up all their files and equipment,” Steve said kindly. “If you want to go oversee-”

Doc shook her head sharply. “No. It’s fine. I’ll go over it once we’re back at the Tower.”

“We’ll be wrapping up in the next half hour or so. Now that we don’t have to run a search for you two we can have wheels up soon after. You can go find a seat if you want.” She nodded and offered them both a very weak smile before trudging up the gangplank into the belly of the jet.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, but one of my favorites. Enjoy.

The flight back to New York was a blur of pain and sleep. Amanda didn’t remember passing out. One moment she was in her seat, listening to the roar of the engine and trying to ignore the throb of pain in her hand and arm, the next she was waking up, slumped awkwardly to her right, resting against Barnes’ shoulder. He sat passively while she straightened, then gestured to one of the agents across from them. He tossed the sergeant a bottle of water and an energy bar, which Barnes opened and handed to her. She sighed and took them gratefully. She hadn’t realized she was hungry until she started eating.

When they landed they were met by a throng of people, including Tiffani and Amanda’s main lab assistant, Pooja. (She was getting better with names, resolutions did work.) They whisked her away for X-rays and an exam, ignoring her protests. Someone must have called ahead because Tiffani had a fresh pair of glasses for her, though in a different style than her old ones. Being able to see again improved her mood remarkably.

X-rays confirmed three broken fingers, bruised ribs and a hairline fracture of her radius, which explained why the pain had been so bad even after splinting the fingers. Tiffani made her a cup of tea while they finished the exam, then Hill and a man she didn’t know appeared demanding her debrief before painkillers and sleep could dim some of the details. Tiffani protested that she needed to put a cast on the arm and hand and somehow the two of them, plus the male agent ended up in a debrief room, with casting materials spread on the table. Amanda split her attention between telling her story and watching Tiffani’s work.

“After Sergeant Barnes dispatched the three Hydra agents, what happened?” The agent had been asking her clarifying questions since she’d started, as if she needed help following the thread of her own story. She was tired and beat up, so she supposed he might have reason for concern. Still, it was starting to get on her nerves.

“He found a grove suitable for settling down for the night. He hunted for dinner while I built a fire. When he got back I dealt with his leg wound and he helped me splint my fingers. We ate, then I slept.”

“Did Sergeant Barnes sleep?”

Amanda glanced over at him. “I don’t know. He was awake when I went to sleep. It’s likely he stayed up and kept watch.”

The agent’s brow went up. “You didn’t take a watch shift?”

“He didn’t mention it and I didn’t offer. I was injured and not used to that much exertion. It seemed more useful for me to get some rest.”

“What happened between hunting, wound care and your rest?”

She frowned. “Nothing. We talked. We ate the rabbit.”

His head tilted back as if she’d just said something very interesting. “What did you talk about?”

Amanda was momentarily distracted by Tiffani filling out a drug request form. “I don’t want Percocet. Advil is fine.”

Her nurse rolled her eyes. “You have three broken fingers, damaged ribs and a fractured wrist. Take your damn drugs and shut up.”

“Why do I keep you?”

“Ms. Newbury? What did you talk about?”

“It’s Dr. Newbury and I don’t think it’s any of your business.”

“Is it a secret?”

She glanced at him. “It just isn’t relevant. I mentioned my family. My father took us camping. Small talk.” She went back to glowering at a completely unperturbed Tiffani and added, “You’d prefer we sat in stony silence?”

“Was talking all you did?” he asked quietly.

Tiffani lifted her gaze from the paper and looked from Amanda to the agent. That look alone told her she hadn’t misinterpreted the implied question. She turned her head very slowly to look at the man. “What?”

“It’s a straight forward question. Did you and Sergeant Barnes do anything other than talk during your night in the woods?” He had an air of a predator who had pounced on unsuspecting prey. Not a dignified predator, though. Something sneaky.

“Are you asking me if Barnes forced himself on me or if we fucked consensually?” Tiffani sucked a breath in at the curse.

“Did you?”

“No and no. If he’d attacked me then one of us would be dead. If I wanted to sleep with him voluntarily then I have had plenty of opportunities to do so other than on the insect covered floor of a Boreal forest while I had three broken fingers, bruised ribs and a fractured arm.”

“We simply need an accurate timeline-”

“Would you have asked me that question if I was out in the woods with Captain Rogers for a night?”

That flustered him visibly and suddenly Amanda felt like the predator. “Well, I-”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” she said. Tiffani had started frantically packing up her stuff, obviously afraid this was about to go south quickly. “Because he’s Captain fucking America and Barnes is an unknown asset everyone is still expecting to blow. Hell, sometimes I think you’re all _hoping_ he’ll falter just so you can pat yourselves on the back for being right not to trust him.”

“Ms. Newbury, obviously you’re-”

“It’s _Doctor_ ,” she repeated through gritted teeth. “It’s the twenty first century, they let us fragile womenfolk be doctors now. You want an accurate timeline? Sergeant Barnes saved my life. Then he _kept me_ alive until we reached the jet. This despite the fact I’m a non-combatant who would have slowed him down on my best day.”

The agent made a valiant effort to rally. “In emergency situations it’s expected for fighting personnel to protect non-combatants.”

“But you just made it clear you don’t expect Sergeant Barnes to have those sort of allegiances. So which is it?” He didn’t respond. “That man owes me nothing and he stuck by me like we’d been field partners for years. And you want to sit me in a little room on no sleep and try to get me to admit he acted in anyway untoward? What the hell is wrong with you people?”

He cleared this throat and shuffled his papers, trying to regain control of the situation. “You’re obviously upset. You’ve been through a trauma. If you’d like to continue this-”

She stood and Tiffani scrambled to her feet next the her. “I am upset,” Amanda clarified. “Because some dickless, pencil-pushing asshole thinks he can accuse a friend of mine of being a traitor or possibly a rapist. I’m going to my quarters now. I hope to never see you again. But if you do want to continue this be prepared to sit through a power-point on what a blithering idiot you are.” With that, she turned and left, Tiffani at her heels.

“That was awesome,” her nurse whispered at they walked away.

“Thank you.”

“No, seriously. I wish I’d been recording that on my phone. My retelling of it will not be nearly as awesome.”

Amanda smiled a little and let the other woman drag her to dispensary for her Percocet. Her arm did hurt and she’d earned a couple days off. Tiffani marched her to her apartment door, promised she would hold down the fort at the infirmary and waited until she was inside, door locked, before leaving.

After an awkward shower with her cast in an old plastic grocery bag, Amanda took her drugs with a piece of stale bread and butter and settled in to sleep for a few days.

*

Doc took four days off after they got back from Romania. Bucky knew this because he went down to the infirmary the next day and found only her little blonde nurse there. She, at least, seemed to have gotten over most of her fear of him and told him Dr. Newbury was on mandatory vacation for as long at the nurse could hold her off. She did promise to let him know when she was back on duty, which he appreciated. He knew JARVIS could tell him where anyone was in the Tower at any time, but he tried not to use the computer for that purpose. It felt a little too much like spying for his taste. 

On the fifth morning he got a text from Nurse Myer. _She’s back and she’s grumpy. I’m hiding in the lab. Good luck._  

He found himself fighting a smile as he made his way to the infirmary. He felt like grumpy Doc was something he’d like to see.

She was sitting at her usual spot at the lab table, hunched over her computer, scowling. Her left arm was in a cast from her fingertips to just before her elbow and she’d finally gotten a proper sling. Based on how much she was fidgeting her arm on the table, then off, then on again, she wasn’t enjoying being one armed.

He made sure to make a noise as he stepped in and she lifted her head and turned, still scowling, as if ready to take out her mood on whoever had dared come see her. It softened when she saw him. “Sergeant.”

The bruise on her jaw had stopped swelling and was now just an impressive blend of purple and blue. She had new glasses, thick black framed square ones. He liked them better than the wire ones, though he couldn’t put his finger on why. Her hair was down for the first time since he’d met her, a dark curtain that fell past her shoulders. “Doc,” he said. “Are you supposed to be back at work?”

“Probably not, but I can only stare at my apartment walls for so long before I get bitchy.”

“Your hair is down.”

She lifted her cast. “Can’t put it up one handed. Don’t offer to help, neither of us will survive the indignity.”

He fought that smile again. “I came by to say thank you.”

“For what?” she asked, turning back to her computer to poke at something.

“I heard what you told your debriefing agent.”

She froze and turned back to him, eyes wide. “You heard about that?”

“Not about it. I heard the recording.”

“They recorded it?!” Her voice actually went a little squeaky at the end of that.

This probably shouldn’t be this fun. “SOP for debriefs.” She covered her face with her good hand, muttering a curse. The smile broke through, he couldn’t help it anymore. “All that cussing and you ended with ‘blithering idiot?’”

“I didn’t want to get repetitive,” she mumbled, face still covered.

He hesitated, not entirely sure how to phrase his next question. Finally, he managed, “Did you mean what you said?”

She dropped her hand. “Well, he is an idiot but I’m fairly certain he has a dick.”

Yeah, he definitely liked bitchy Doc. “I meant about being friends.”

Her brows went up a little. “Of course I meant it, Barnes. I don’t let just anyone hang out here all day and use my laptop.”

He tilted his head, letting a little smile quirk his mouth. “Shouldn’t you call me Bucky, then?”

She wrinkled her nose at that. “I think I prefer Barnes.” Her face softened into a smile. “How about James?”

No one had called him that since he’d come here. He tipped his head back to consider it. “I remember my mother calling me that. Jamie, actually.”

“If it brings up bad-”

He stopped her with a shake of his head. “No. It’s fine. You can call me James.” He looked at her expectantly.

She sighed and shrugged. “Amanda.”

“Do friends call you Mandy?” he asked, pretty sure of the answer.

“Not and remain my friends.”

As expected. “Amanda it is.” He held out his hand and she shook it, smiling.


	8. Chapter 8

“You are the worst patient I have ever met. I tell stories about you on nurse message boards and the other nurses _don’t believe me_.”

Bucky tipped his head back and followed the sounds of Amanda fighting with her nurse all the way from the elevator.

“I’m _fine_.” There was his prickly doctor now. “The cast is only in my way.”

“It’s been three weeks, Dr. Newbury. Bare minimum on a break like yours is four and at your age-”

“Are you seriously going to finish that sentence?”

He turned the corner in time to see Nurse Myer cross her arms and stick out her chin. “At. Your. Age. Six weeks is recommended. We can take a new X-ray at five and reassess then, but not now.”

“At least let me switch to a brace and buddy tape.”

“Taking the cast off prematurely will compromise long term healing. You are a doctor and a sometimes surgeon for the most active superhero team on Earth. Be sensible.” The nurse spotted Bucky over Amanda’s shoulder and cast him a desperate look.

He stopped right behind the doctor before speaking. “Are you in need of distraction?”

Her shoulders stiffened, but she didn’t turn. “Tiffani thinks I shouldn’t be back to work yet.”

“You shouldn’t!” the little blonde insisted. 

“I need furniture,” he said conversationally.

That got her to turn around and look at him. The bruise on her jaw had faded to nothing. Other than the cast she looked fine. “I thought you were staying with Captain Rogers?”

“I was. Am. They’re giving me my own quarters. Upgrade for good behavior. Stark is renovating another floor for temp housing. I’ll have my own place in a couple weeks.”

“We’ll be neighbors,” Amanda said with a smile.

He was pretty sure they’d counted as neighbors beforehand, what with living in the same building. It seemed like splitting hairs, though, and they would be far closer once he moved. “Steve said I have to have furniture. Real furniture, not a mattress on the floor. He was very specific on this.”

Nurse Myer nudged Amanda’s side. “A trip to IKEA is just the sort of distraction you need.”

Bucky’s brow furrowed. “What’s an IKEA?”

IKEA turned out to be one of the circles of hell, at least as far as he was concerned. Amanda had to actually drag him out once he started trying to pry couches apart with his bare hands. She hauled him all the way back to the subway. Now they were in her apartment, eating something called dim sum, while she searched online for a local furniture stores that might make him less angry.

“Pressboard and L brackets are not furniture.”

Amanda groaned, reaching across the table to snag a dumpling. “All the horrors of the twenty-first century. Pollution, global warming, biochemical terrorism, civil rights atrocities. But no. It’s cheap furniture that outrages you.”

“Not sure about global warming but we had the rest of that in the forties. Ever stand next to a ’36 Packard?” She held up a finger and pointed at him, as if to say ‘touché’ while she chewed.

He’d never been in her apartment before. Her office desk and computer were conspicuously lacking in personal affects and he found himself curious as to what her living space might contain. So, taking advantage of her distraction, he grabbed some pork bun thing she’d called bao and stood to roam her living room.

Her couch was made out of actual wood, though appeared to be somewhat fancier than anything he’d buy. There was a heavy, hand-knit afghan thrown over the back of it and a little basket at the end with several balls of yarn and what looked like most of a sock on four wooden needles. “You knit?” he called over his shoulder, mouth full.

“When I have both hands, yes. Treat me nice and you can have socks for your birthday.”

Of course her hobby involved pointy sticks. He filed that away with all the other tidbits he knew about her and moved on to her bookcase. There was a smattering of horror novels, some medical textbooks, a few well loved children’s books. A Shakespeare collection. A couple thin poetry compilations. And pictures. She had framed pictures scattered throughout the books, bracing half full shelves and even sitting on top of short stacks.

He picked up one shot of three girls, the youngest in a graduation cap and gown. The graduate was extremely pretty. Bright green eyes, dark hair, movie star smile. The one on her right was a head shorter than her, lighter hair, features similar to Amanda’s, but a little sharper. On the graduate’s left was Amanda.

She was younger. No scar, no glasses. Probably fresh out of med school and just embarking on her journey. She was grinning at the camera in a way he’d never seen her smile in real life. He could still see a little weariness in her eyes, though. As if she might be waiting for something to go wrong.

“My youngest sister’s high school graduation,” she said at his elbow. He glanced at her. “You were too quiet for too long,” she explained. “Should have known you’d be a snoop.”

“What does your family think of you working for superheroes?”

She laughed a little. “They don’t know.” He was sure surprise showed on his face because she sighed and continued, “They knew I worked for SHIELD. And they got to witness the rather spectacular end of that career. But they think I work for a lab with a very strict NDA.” She tapped a finger on the face of the graduate in the picture. “Jessica is a reporter for MSNBC, she’d be bugging me for interviews and insider information. Dad is a war history buff. If he knew I lived in the same building as Captain America and picked out couches with Bucky Barnes he’d probably break a hip just to have an excuse to move in.”

“That’s why you knew about all those movies,” he realized.

“Soundtrack of my childhood,” she confirmed. “Growing up with stories of the Howling Commandos is why he joined the army. Vietnam wasn’t quite as glorified as World War II, though.” She shrugged and took the picture from him, putting it back on the shelf. “Once he finished fan-boying out on you, you’d probably get along.”

It was still strange to think he was famous in some way. Other than the rumors he had caused as the Soldier. That people could be his fan. Would want to meet him. He scanned her shelves again, stretching over his head to take down a tarnished silver frame. This picture was of a pretty brunette woman with a very seventies hairstyle and paisley peasant blouse. She was holding a baby in a frilly green dress. “This is your mother.”

“And little, six month old me, yes.” Her tone was falsely casual.

He glanced at her. “You said she died.”

Amanda nodded, looking at the picture and not him. “Cancer of the spine. Barely made it six months after diagnosis. I was eight. Becca was five and a half. Jess was two.” Her mouth twitched into something that was almost a smile. “Learned how to say Mama just in time to ask where she’d gone.” The smile thinned out into something pained. She took the frame from him and put it back firmly. “It was a long time ago,” she added, turning away from the shelves to head back to the kitchen. “I found somewhere that advertises all hand-made wood furniture, but it’s in New Jersey. We’ll have to get a car from the motor pool you can drive.”

The change in topic was blatant and clumsy. But he was hardly one to push for a Discussion if she didn’t want to have it. So he glanced at the pictures one more time and followed her. “I can’t drive.”

She looked at him, chopsticks halfway to her mouth. “How can you not drive? How did you get to all your assassinations? Bus? Taxi?” She stopped and pointed her chop sticks at him. “Oh, I just thought of another movie to show you.”

He liked that she referred to his time as the Soldier so casually. Everyone else tiptoed around it; employing euphemisms or becoming overly serious. Amanda talked about it like it was a vaguely unsavory job he’d held for a while. “I usually had teams with me. I was more useful as a shooter than a driver. If I ever knew how it’s gone now. Why can’t you drive?”

“Other than the broken arm? I let my license lapse after my sight was damaged. Technically I meet the legal limits with my glasses on, but the roads are still safer with me off them.”

Well, that was a bit of a dilemma. “So, technically, you know _how_. . .”

She groaned and put her head in her hand. “I’m going to break the law tomorrow, aren’t I?”

*

“I’m fairly certain the furniture delivery men would have carried this all up, had you let them,” Amanda said, holding the door of James’ apartment open as he and Captain Rogers manhandled his new couch through it.  
 “What is the point of having a robotic arm if I don’t use it for petty, selfish reasons once in a while?” he muttered, shifting his grip as he backed into his living room.

The new apartments had taken two weeks to complete. Amanda had spent those two weeks visiting every old fashioned furniture seller in the tri-state area with the pickiest 90-year-old assassin in the world. Now, finally, the doors were open, the furniture was arriving and she was out of her cast and in a brace, her pinkie and ring fingers taped together for more stability. She was in a remarkably good mood, all things considered.

The men set the couch down in living room next to the coffee table and armchair that had been delivered earlier and flopped on it almost in unison. She closed the door and walked over to perch on the arm next to James and consulted her clip board. “This was the last delivery except for the dining set which won’t be here until tomorrow because someone cares far too much about stain color.”

“The aged oak was too light.” The remarkable thing was he said it with complete, deadly seriousness. Over the last two weeks she had discovered that his father had been a contractor and carpenter and had, apparently, instilled a love of the craft into James so deeply even seventy years of brainwashing hadn’t shaken it. She had learned more about wood types and finishes in the last week than she would ever conceivably use.

“It was wood colored. They’re all wood colored.” 

He pinned her with a look that really should have only been aimed through a sniper scope. “You are a product of your time,” he informed her, standing and heading towards his kitchen. “I will not judge you too harshly.”

“Cranky old man,” she called after him.

Captain Rogers was staring at her. She looked back at her clipboard in an effort to avoid his gaze. He didn’t take the hint. “You’re good for him,” he said quietly.

“Well, I am a doctor,” she replied, trying to keep her voice, and hopefully the conversation, light.

“I just mean. . . he jokes with you. It’s nice to see.”

She sighed and looked over at him. “I don’t have any expectations. I never knew him as Bucky. I don’t care about the Soldier. I just accept what I’m given. Sometimes he wants to joke, sometimes he barely speaks. I roll with it.”

Rogers was silent a moment. “You think I have too many expectations.”

“I think you want your friend back. And you jump every time you see a glimpse of him. And it’s a lot of pressure. Enough that maybe he doesn’t want to show those glimpses for fear of the reaction. I’m not saying give up on seeing your old friend again. Just get to know this guy.” She nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “When not furniture shopping, he’s decent company.”

“I’m always decent company,” James said, coming out of the kitchen drinking a beer. He handed another bottle to Steve. She’d also gone grocery shopping with him the night before, which had been almost as fun as the furniture. Alone he would have bought the entire candy aisle. And the discussion on how one, exactly, milked an almond had lasted three aisles.

“Why don’t I get a beer?” she asked.

He looked at her as he took another swig of his. “You didn’t move furniture.”

Not breaking eye contact, she reached out with a foot and nudged the coffee table an inch back with her toes. 

He shook his head and smirked. “Pain in the ass.” He handed her his beer and went back for another. 

She briefly considered lecturing him about germ theory, but decided it wasn’t worth it and took a drink. The bottle was at her lips when it occurred to her to wonder when she’d become comfortable sharing drinks with this man.

“See,” Rogers said. “What I like best, is that you bring out the old friend in him.” He gave her an odd little smile as he took a drink of his beer.

With her arm out of the cast, Tiffani finally stopped trying to herd her out of the lab. It was nice to get back to work, now that James no longer needed a shopping buddy. He went on a short mission right after move-in day and she didn’t see him for over a week. Even after he got back he didn’t find his way down to the infirmary. Now that he was an active member of the team he seemed to have more to do during the day. 

She missed her ghost in the corner. She had a running list on her laptop of movies to show him and songs for him to listen to. Captain Rogers had his own notebook of pop culture and historical things to catch up on. James had taken no interest in such an endeavor and still seemed to trip over references and cultural touch stones he didn’t understand. So, she’d taken it upon herself to catch him up, keeping in mind things that might be triggers. Anything involving brainwashing, reality being unreliable, amnesia or the cold was automatically off limits. War movies were on a case by case basis. And she was still trying to sort out his humor. He was a willing subject, for the most part. Popcorn helped.

But with him busy the list was growing daily with nothing getting crossed off. She should probably just stop adding to it. Accept the fact she’d been a crutch or stepping stone to normal social interaction. It was good for him to have friends. Bond with the people he went on missions with. Her infirmary was small and he had outgrown it.

It felt like she had just fallen asleep when JARVIS started chiming at her. She still wasn’t entirely used to have the AI everywhere. She liked to pretend there was a person at the other end. Some stuffy British butler, whip thin with a Roman nose and permanent faint frown. 

“Yeah?” she mumbled, reaching for her glasses.

“I’m sorry to wake you, Dr. Newbury, but Sergeant Barnes is outside your door and I believe he may be in some distress.”

She sat up, shoving her glasses on her nose. “Shit.”

“Indeed.”

“Thank you, JARVIS,” she said pointedly, hoping he’d take the hint and stop paying attention to her. She grabbed her robe as she left the bedroom, shrugging into it and tying it shut before opening the front door.

Sure enough, James was on the other side, in sweat pants and a white undershirt. His hair, never what one might call tidy, was wild, as if he’d run his hands through it over and over. His brow furrowed when he saw her and he looked at the door in confusion.

 “JARVIS told me,” she explained. “What’s wrong?”

He frowned, looking downright murderous. “Nothing. I’m sorry I woke you.”

She sighed. “JARVIS, what time is it?”

“Three forty eight am, Dr. Newbury.”

 “Thank you.” She looked at James. “You aren’t standing outside my door at four am for nothing. It is either too late or too early for bullshit, James. What is it?”

His left hand went through his hair. “I can’t sleep.”

“If you had a nightmare it’s nothing to be-”

“No. Not just tonight. I can’t sleep in the new apartment.”

She stared a moment. “You’ve been in there almost two weeks. You mean you haven’t slept the night since you moved in?” He nodded. “James, human beings cannot go ten days with no sleep.”

“I’m not entirely human, am I? And I’ve managed a couple of hours here and there.”

Oh, it was just way, way too early for this. She stepped back. “Get in here.”

He shuffled forward almost reluctantly, but he did obey her. She steered him to the kitchen, sat him at her little table and started taking out pots and rummaging in her cabinets. “Could you sleep when you were at Steve’s?” She glanced at him to catch his nod. “Why do you think it’s different now?”

“I was aware he was there. When I woke up. Not that I could hear him breathing through the wall or anything but. . . there was a presence. I could tell I wasn’t alone. The new place I’m alone. Isolated. I forget where I am.”

She processed that, heating milk on her stove and adding cocoa powder and spices. “I’m sure Steve would let you-”

“ _No_.”

Right. Male pride. Back away slowly. “I could prescribe you something to help you sleep.”

“They might stop letting me go on missions if they know I need medication.”

It would have to go in his file and yes, there were some who would use it as a reason to ground him. She could, in theory, keep it off the books. But she needed to be able to treat him like everyone else if they were going to be friends.

She poured the hot cocoa into two mugs and brought them to the table, setting one in front of him. He looked at it suspiciously. “I thought you didn’t cook.”

“This isn’t cooking. It’s heating up a liquid and adding flavor. That’s basically ramen and I would have starved in college without that.”

His brow furrowed. “Ramen?”

She sighed. “I’ll put it on your list. Just drink it.”

Still a little hesitant, he picked up the mug and sipped it cautiously. His brows went up a little and he took another drink. “What’s in this?”

“Chocolate. Cinnamon, nutmeg and a little vanilla extract.” She drank her own. “It’s how my mother made it. I used to fix it for my sisters when they had bad dreams.” He looked over at her. “This is as nurturing as I get, James.”

That earned her his little half smile and he peered into his drink a moment before bring the mug back up to his lips. She watched him, hands curled around her mug. Finally, she said quietly, “I know therapy wasn’t really done much in your time but it might help you to have someone to talk to.”

“Wilson found me one, when I first came here. He tried. We didn’t click.” 

Well, she’d give him points for trying. She rubbed her left eye with a knuckle. They weren’t going to think of a big picture reason for this now. It was four am and she kind of hated everything. For now, at least, she could get him to sleep for one night.

He finished his cocoa and she stood. “Come on.” He frowned a little, but stood and followed her back to her bedroom. Her couch was not made for sleeping on and while he could probably pass out in her comfy arm chair even super soldiers got neck cricks.

When he saw her bed he balked and she stepped behind him to push with her good arm. “Go.”

“I can’t-”

“Shush. You need to sleep. I don’t have a spare room. Lay down.”

It was a testament to how tired he was that he obeyed, stretching out on his back on one side of her bed. His breath came out in a relieved sigh and she saw his eyes close. “Did you put something in that drink?” he mumbled.

“Warm milk has soporific qualities. Also, you haven’t slept for ten days.” He didn’t respond and she was fairly certain he was asleep before she finished speaking.

Sleep softened his features; made him look more like the man she remembered in documentaries and history books. He didn’t look innocent, by any means. But some of the demons he carried with him seemed to melt away. Despite herself, she reached out and brushed some of the hair off his forehead.

She should go sleep in her arm chair, suffer the neck crick herself. But he was laying perfectly still and she did have a king bed. 

It was four am, she was not having this inner debate. She walked around the bed and stretched out on the other side. She tossed her glasses back on her nightstand and yawned before rolling onto her side and drifting to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't read any Captain America comics and know very little about comic!Bucky. So any background on his family, father's profession or furniture preferences is my own.


	9. Chapter 9

Bucky woke up curled around a sleeping woman. He knew that’s what it was before he even opened his eyes. The sensation was familiar, though for the life of him he couldn’t bring to mind the name or face of any woman he’d ever woken up to. Amnesia was maddening in its randomness.

He opened his eyes and shifted back to look at Amanda. She was on her right side, still-sore left arm tucked up against her chest, still draped in her robe. His metal hand was on her hip and for an instant he wished he had better sensation in it.

He’d been this close to her a few times, usually in the lab when she had to fix something on her computer he’d messed up. In Romania he’d had his arm around her to help her up the hill. Then she’d been exhausted and dirty from their time in the forest. Now she was soft and sleep warm and smelled like tropical flowers.

Her alarm beeped and he eased away, rolling onto his back a few seconds before she smacked the alarm and groaned. He saw the exact moment she remembered he was there, her shoulders tightening up. She very deliberately sat up and slid her glasses on before looking over at him with an unreadable expression. “You slept?” she asked. He nodded and she nodded back before standing and walking to the bathroom.

Well, he was pretty sure mornings after were always pretty awkward. Good to know the actual sex had nothing to do with that. He heard water running in the bathroom and rolled out of bed himself. The least he could do was make her coffee as a thank you for a good night’s sleep.

He was still looking through her cupboards when she appeared in a grey and blue shirt and jeans. “Where is your coffee?”

She paused in the doorway. “I don’t drink coffee.”

He leaned back to peer around the cupboard door. “You don’t?”

“Eight months you’ve known me and you’ve never noticed I don’t drink coffee?” She opened the cupboard next to him and came down with a french press and a tupperware of what looked like loose tea. “Some super-assassin.”

“I don’t know that drink preference would be relevant to assassination.”

“It would be if you were poisoning them.” She tossed him a smile as she put her kettle on.

And just like that, the awkwardness was gone. She fixed them tea and bowls of cereal while he washed their hot chocolate mugs. Then they sat across from each other at her table, just as they had the night before, and ate breakfast as she checked her phone and he flipped through a book he found on her end table. He wondered if this is what long-time married people felt like. The comfort in the silence, communicating without speech.

“All right,” she said, downing the last of her tea. “I have a patient coming in ten minutes.” She dumped her plates in the sink. “If you want to hang out and try to sleep more you’re welcome to stay as long as you want.”

He nodded and looked up as she stopped at his side. “Thank you,” he said quietly. He wasn’t entirely sure how to articulate what, exactly he was thanking her for.

She smiled, a soft, gentle smile he didn’t know that he’d ever seen on her face before. Very slowly, she lifted her hand and brushed some of his hair off his forehead. Steve still occasionally mentioned getting it cut. But he found himself attached to the shaggy hair. He took a breath and resisted the urge to lean his cheek into her hand. “You smell good,” he said instead, wincing a little at the inanity of it.

The smile split into her usual grin. “Lotion. Doctors wash their hands all the time. You don’t make it out of med school without finding a lotion that keeps your skin from cracking.” She dropped her hand and took a step back. “I’ll see you later, James,” she said softly, heading out of the kitchen. A few minutes later he heard the front door open and shut.

Pride kept him from going back the next night. He slept perhaps two hours in his own apartment, then spent the next three staring at the ceiling before getting up to sit on his couch and read the rest of the book he’d stolen from her. When he showed up at the infirmary that afternoon Amanda had looked at him appraisingly and he knew she saw right through him.

That night, when he woke up at one, he grabbed a change of clothes and went down and knocked on her door. She opened it wrapped in her robe and let him in without a word. It was distracting, trying to fall asleep next to her. But before he knew it, her alarm was going off and the sun was shining through the window.

By the fifth night she didn’t even bother putting the robe on to answer the door and he discovered she wore flannel pants and a t-shirt with a distressed print of Steve’s shield as pajamas.

“Seriously?” he said, gesturing to the shirt.

She frowned, looking down, like she’d forgotten what she was wearing. When she looked back at him she was glaring. “Tell you what, when they make Winter Soldier pajamas I’ll wear them.” She pointed to her bedroom. “Get in bed, I have to be up in three hours for a meeting.”

He glanced at her clock on his way to bed. “You have a six thirty meeting?”

“It’s with a lab in Chennai.” She crawled into her side of the bed and pulled the covers up to her chin.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

Her hand curled around his. “Shh. Sleep.”

He froze. It was her left hand and his right, so he could feel the texture of her skin in intricate detail. He knew her fingers were still achy from her injury PT and he was well aware how much stronger than her he was. So, as much as he enjoyed the touch, he was hesitant to return the hold. Eventually, her fingers went lax with sleep and he relaxed enough to doze off himself.

He slept through her alarm but roused a little when she got out of bed. She patted his head absently on her way past and he went back to sleep almost immediately.

At noon he appeared in the infirmary with an egg salad sandwich from the diner and a chai tea from Starbucks. He didn’t think he had ever known anyone well enough to confidently order lunch for them and he decided this redeemed him for the coffee incident the other day.

She was slumped at her desk when he went in, chin propped in her hand, scanning something on her screen. Her eyes flicked to the door when it opened and she smiled when she saw it was him. “Good afternoon.”

He held up the cup and take-out box like a peace offering and the smile spread. She waved him over, taking the box from him when he reached her. “Thank you. I was just starting to think about finding lunch.”

“I thought it would make up for the interrupted sleep.”

She sipped the tea and set the cup down. “You can’t keep waking me up,” she said gently.

After dragging his chair over to the other side of the desk he sank into it and rested his elbows on his knees. “I know. I’m sorry. I can figure out another -”

There was a soft sound as she opened her drawer, then a clink as she held something out. He glanced up to find her dangling a key from her forefinger by a keychain with a star on it. He stared at it a moment, then looked at her face. “What’s this?”

“Key to my apartment. I was going to get a Captain America keychain to annoy you, then I saw the star.” She shrugged. “You climbing into bed will wake me up far less than having to go answer the door. You can work on your stealth skills.”

Very slowly, he reached out and took the key from her, the little scrap of metal oddly heavy in his hand. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I really do. PTSD is a funny thing, James. Yours more than most people’s, I’d imagine. If sleeping in my apartment makes it easier on you then let’s run with that for a while. You don’t snore or hog the sheets, so I have no complaints. Maybe someday you’ll be ready to try it alone again.” She smiled and opened up her sandwich box. “Besides, we’re friends, right? Friends have each other’s keys.”

She probably could have just told JARVIS that he was allowed in her apartment at all hours. As far as Bucky knew, the AI could open any door in the Tower under the right circumstances. The key was a symbol, more than anything else. _I trust you. We’re friends. You’re welcome to visit. You aren’t a burden._

He tucked the key away and offered her a genuine smile. “Thank you.”

“You could even come before three in the morning,” she told him casually, picking up half of the sandwich. “We could watch a movie,” she added before taking a bite.

*

James wasn’t even bothering to sleep in his room anymore. The first week or so after giving him the key he simply appeared sometime during the night. Amanda went to sleep alone and woke up tucked again his side or with his arm flung over her waist. She didn’t recall being disturbed when he joined her. Apparently, the stealth was working.

Saturday night he actually showed up at dinner time, with a bag from her favorite sushi place and a very hesitant expression on his face. Movie selection was a negotiation worthy of Wall Street, but eventually they were in their preferred seats (her on her couch, he on the armchair) watching an action movie while she knit. She wondered when, precisely, they had become an old married couple.

She woke early on Sunday morning. He lifted his head while she was still rummaging in her dresser. “I thought you didn’t take appointments on Sundays?” he asked in a deep, sleep rough voice that she found far too sexy to be real.

“I’m going to the gym,” she said. There was no response and she looked over to find him watching her with interest. “No, see, you’re picturing me going eight rounds with the punching bag and doing a thousand push-ups or whatever it is you and Rogers do up there. I’m going to jog on the treadmill for an hour, poke at the weight machine in fear and head down to the bakery across the street for doughnuts.”

He tossed the sheets off his legs, sitting up. “I’ll meet you up there.”

In fact, he beat her to the gym, somehow, and blocked her from the treadmills. “No. Whatever you’re planning, no.”

The look on his face could only be described as mischievous. She hadn’t actually known he _could_ look like that. “I’m going to teach you to punch.”

“Maybe I’ll skip right to the doughnuts,” she muttered, turning back to the door.

He caught her arm and started guiding her towards the bags. “You’ve taught me how to online shop, pick movies and use chopsticks. I don’t have a lot of skills. You already know how to shoot. I can teach you to hit.”

She sighed. That was a remarkably persuasive argument. She didn’t know if he meant it or was just playing her, but that was actually a good sign in and of itself. The man she’d met months ago wouldn’t have tried to pull one over on her. Still, she couldn’t give up that easily. “My left hand was recently broken.”

“You know how martial artists can break boards with their fingertips? They cause repeated micro fractures in the bones of their hands so they heal stronger. This’ll be good for you.” He stopped her in front of the bags and started wrapping her hands in cloth.

“We’re not sparring, are we? That seems aggressively unfair.”

His mouth quirked up. “No. It’ll be just you and the bag.”

“Are you going to make fun of me?”

“Only if you’re terrible.”

She was surprisingly un-terrible. Especially considering James was apparently a hands-on teacher. He had no problem nudging her shoulder down or her elbow in. Or even standing behind her and moving her arms through the motion he wanted her to have. With another guy she would have thought he was making a move on her. But he seemed to be completely impervious to the amount of touching they were doing. Whereas she found it completely, utterly distracting.

Still, she had no problem pounding on the bag, trying different kinds of punches and picturing her fist going all the way through the bag.

“I imagine that visualization works better when you can literally punch through a bag,” she commented when he finally let her stop for water.

“I don’t think I can actually do that,” he replied mildly.

“You punched through a car door.”

“Left arm doesn’t count.”

She couldn’t help but grin at how easily he joked about it now. She held her hands out, still wrapped in the cloth. “Can I start my treadmill time, please?”

He shook his head, but reached out and unwrapped her hands for her. He was remarkably gentle while he did so. She’d expected her fingers to be swollen, or at least sore, but apparently his wrappings were more protective then she’d expected.

“Thank you for the lesson,” she said quietly.

He looked up at her, meeting her eyes. “You’re welcome. Same time next week?”

She didn’t even make it a week. On Thursday, one of the lab interns turned the wrong knob on an incubator, ruining the experiment that was in it and losing almost two months of work. When she had chewed the guy out, cleaned up the mess and arranged to start the experiment over she was still pissed off. So she found James and dragged him up to the gym for another lesson. She’d never known how viscerally satisfying pummeling a bag of sand could be.

Admittedly, adding workout buddy to her already strange relationship with James was a trial for her normally dormant libido. When he slept in sweatpants and an undershirt it didn’t affect her. Partly because she was sleeping for most of the experience and partly because she associated his sleeping with her as a form of therapy. He wasn’t there for pleasure, just to help his insomnia. The doctor part of her brain handled it and any nudity was processed thusly.

Watching him go at the punching bag or lift weights in the same outfit was a different thing entirely. In the gym he was moving. And sweating. And suddenly she was fifteen and in PE class. Nerdy asthmatic pretending not to watch the jocks play football was not a stage in her life she wished to revisit. He was, at least, nicer than the jocks from her school. Probably still wouldn’t appreciate the staring.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t noticed he was attractive before. She was surrounded by attractive people in this building. Hell, she’d given physicals to all of the men on the Avengers team and any one of them could have been on the cover of a GQ with very little touching up. Clint Barton was mostly biceps with legs and even Banner took care of himself in an effort to control the Other Guy. Hot guys were a daily occurrence in her life and, generally speaking, none of them got her heart thumping. She could look at a piece of art without having the urge to own it.

James was becoming a different matter entirely. She had spent the last six years or so living more or less like a nun; a fact her sisters reminded her of regularly. James - this James, sarcastic, occasionally smiling, movie watching James - made her want to reconsider this lifestyle. He was the first man to do so in years. And she honestly had no idea what to do about that. She hadn’t been particularly good at flirting and relationships before more than half a decade of celibacy, she certainly had no idea how to start now.

She didn’t even know if she _should_ start. Aside from the fact she was his doctor and there were ethics involved, he was still recovering. He was far better than he had been when he arrived, but there were obviously still demons he was tangling with. There always would be and whoever he did start a romantic relationship with would need to be able to handle that. She didn’t know if she was that person. Not to mention the fact she was fairly certain that she was the only person on earth other than Rogers he considered a friend. Chances were he wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that. Even it he was ready for a relationship. And who said _she_ was ready for a relationship? Lust and a reawakening libido were no basis for such a decision.

And so went her spiraling thoughts until one bright summer day when he sidled up beside her at her work table and put a wrapped box by her elbow.

Amanda looked at it like it was a snake. “What is this?”

“A birthday present,” he replied with unhidden smugness.

She put down her pen and fingered the bright red ribbon. “Who told you it was my birthday?” She was fairly certain even Tiffani didn’t know. She was the type to buy balloons and insist the department take her out for lunch.

“It’s in your file.”

She turned a little to look at him. “You’ve got access to my file?”

He shrugged. “If I put effort into it I have access to just about everything. Stop being you about this and open your present.”

Probably best if she ignored that last comment. She took the end of the ribbon between her thumb and forefinger and tugged, undoing the very fancy bow. She wondered idly who’d wrapped it. The ribbon fell away and she lifted the top off the box and unfolded the tissue paper.

 Inside was a puddle of silk, white with little red stars all over it. Almost hesitantly, she reached out and touched the fabric, letting it slip through her fingers. “Pajamas?”

“Winter Soldier pajamas.”

She looked up at him, but his expression was unreadable. She had absolutely no idea where he’d found these. But they felt like real silk, slippery and expensive. It must have been extremely difficult to find that particular pattern. It was possible he’d had them custom made. She hunted for a tag and didn’t find one, which rather confirmed the suspicion. “Are we going to talk about how you know my size?” she asked lightly.

“I’m excellent with spatial mapping.” He was deadly serious, which she suspected meant he’d rummaged in her drawers.

She looked back at him. He wasn’t the friendliest person in the city, but he wasn’t stupid or generally socially inept. He had to know that this wasn’t the sort of gift you gave a platonic friend. Even one whose pajamas you saw on a regular basis. Which meant, maybe, he was feeling as ambiguous about the platonic label as she was.

“Thank you, James,” she said softly. “They’re lovely.”

“I’m glad you like them,” he replied, just as soft.

It was difficult to swallow for a moment, with him looking at her so intently. “I’ll be happy to model them for you later.”

His mouth curled into a smile, then fell just as quickly. “It’ll have to wait. I’m actually leaving on a mission tonight.”

Her stomach dropped a little, but she tried to hide her disappointment. “Long one?”

“Might be. A few days at least.” The smile came back briefly. “But I’ll look forward to seeing them on you when I get back.”

For a second, she wanted to kiss him. If she were a different person she might have done it. If _he_ were a different person she might have done it. But they were who they were and it wasn’t the right time. Hopefully, when the right time did come one of them would recognize it.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes fairly graphic descriptions of emergency surgery. Please be aware of your triggers.

With most of the team on assignment the Tower was relatively quiet. Amanda focused on her research and experiments. She was still slogging through the files they had taken from the Hydra base in Romania. Their records went back decades, only the last three on readable computer files. Her storage room was full of filing cabinets full of hard copies that dated back to the war. Some of it was out dated, work she and others in SHIELD had surpassed long ago. But there were diamonds of good information amongst the coal, so she kept digging. Maybe if she worked at it eight hours a day, every day, she’d get through it before she retired.

She was contemplating calling it a day, or at least stopping for a snack and chai, when JARVIS chimed over her head. “Dr. Newbury. The team has just called in. They have a severely injured member and are on their way in.”

She had started movings at the word injured. “What kind of casualty?” 

“Multiple gunshot wounds.”

 “Thank you, JARVIS,” she called, jogging down to her labs and bursting in. “We have an emergency,” she announced to the group inside. “Who’s on my team?”

Tiffani and Pooja both jumped up, as did one of the more junior lab assistants, Claire. Amanda had made a point when hiring assistants to find ones with medical experience. Major injuries didn’t happen often, but she needed to be prepared for them, all the same. 

In the corner was the new intern, he of the fucked up incubator. She pointed to him. “You. Your resume said you have EMT training, right?” He nodded frantically. “You ever been in an OR?”

“As an observer, ma’am, not a participant.”

“Good enough, come on if you want to redeem yourself.” He joined the women trailing her out of the lab.

“Pooja and Claire, go prep the OR. We have multiple GSWs so it’s going to be messy. JARVIS, do we know who the patient is?”

“Sergeant Barnes, doctor.”

She stopped, something hard and cold settling in her stomach. For a moment her mind blanked out in panic and she completely forgot what she needed to do next. Tiffani touched her hand lightly and when Amanda looked at her she saw the nurse giving her a scared, sympathetic look. The younger woman squeezed her hand and Amanda took a deep breath. “Right. He’s had the serum, so he’ll need specialty equipment. Pooja, you’ve seen it, right?”

The tech nodded and Amanda felt calmer at the sight of the others’ efficiency. “Yes, doctor. Marked with an S.”

“Good. Get two sets and plenty of anesthesia tanks. He’s blood type A+, let’s get two units prepped and ready for transfusion.” Pooja and Claire ran off to prep and she turned to the intern. “You, up on the roof. Dr. Banner isn’t with them so they didn’t have any proper medic. I want you to meet the plane - JARVIS, what’s ETA?”

“Two minutes until landing, doctor.” The crisp British voice steadied her further, though she couldn’t have said why.

“Thank you,” she said automatically and continued to the man in front of her. “Grab a gurney and meet the plane. Triage. I want to be able to move right to the OR, so I’ll need as thorough an exam as you can do on the elevator down. Can you do that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What’s your name?”

“Kevin, ma’am.”

“Good, go.” He ran off and she added. “Make sure Captain Rogers comes with you, we’ll need his help moving Barnes to the table.” Kevin lifted a hand in acknowledgement and disappeared around the corner.

“You all right, Doc?” Tiffani said softly.

She swallowed hard and scrubbed a hand over her face. “I can’t treat him any differently than anyone else on the team.”

“I know.”

“I’m the only doctor here. I have to do this.” She hated how desperate she sounded.

“I know,” the nurse said gently. “You can do this.”

Amanda nodded. She could do this. Her life was full of things she hadn’t thought she could do but had managed. James was counting on her. She could do this.

She was gowned and ready to scrub when the gurney crashed through the OR doors. Kevin was at the head, with Rogers on the other side and Barton behind him. Mentally, she gave the intern extra points for bringing the walking biceps with them. They slid the gurney next to the operating table so they could move James onto it. Kevin must have given the other men directions because they moved into place without a word. 

Amanda reached across the table and gripped the sheet beneath James, Barton at her side and Kevin, Pooja and Rogers on the other. “On three. One, two, three.” They all lifted him over and Barton took the gurney away. “Kevin, talk to me,” she snapped, turning back to the sink to finish scrubbing.

“Three GSW to the chest, one through and through. Breathing labored. Heartbeat’s rapid and pulse is only readable in the carotid. Romanov and Barton estimated he left about a liter of blood on the ground but I’m guessing he’s got a chestful.”

She returned to the table, scrubbed and gloved and did her own visual inspection as her nurses finished prepping James. She allowed herself a moment of fear and panic, the length of a breath. Then she slammed the doctor into place and ordered herself to think of him as Barnes.

One bullet had taken him high on the right shoulder. The other two were square center mass. “Blood pressure?” she asked Claire.

“78 over 50 and dropping.”

A flash of blue caught her eye. “Captain Rogers, you can unass my OR anytime.”

“I can’t just leave,” he said. 

Oh, she didn’t have time for a pissing contest with him. “Kevin, get yourself and Rogers scrubbed and gowned. Rogers you will keep out of my team’s way or you will find yourself removed. Scalpel.” She held her hand out and Tiffani put the instrument in it.

Amanda made a small incision in Barnes’ side and a gush of blood poured out, causing her and Tiffani to jump back. “Shit,” she muttered. There was at least another half liter there. “Scope.” She slid the little camera in and went hunting for the internal bleeding.

She was dimly aware of Kevin and Rogers rejoining the table. Her eyes were glued to the monitor, looking for signs of a ruptured vessel.

“BP 74/48,” Claire warned. “Heartbeat’s over 130.”

 _Not good._ There was a lot the serum could do. It could rapidly heal injury. Prevent disease. But a body needed blood. It needed its heart to beat and its lungs to work. The serum wouldn’t do him any good if he bled out.

She forced herself to stay calm and methodical. “Come on,” she whispered. “Come on, Jamie, where are you bleeding?” Over her shoulder she thought she heard Rogers suck in a breath. She didn’t have time to worry about it, because she found the nick on his aorta.

“Gotcha. Hold the scope,” she ordered. She didn’t even see who took it. In a few seconds she had her scalpel back and was making a second incision over the leak. Seconds after that it was cauterized. 

“BP stable,” Claire called after a moment. 

Amanda let out a breath. “We have those units ready?”

“Standing by,” Pooja said from her seat at the anesthesia machine. 

“Let’s get one set up and ready to go.”

Kevin ran for it and she took the scope to start hunting for any other bleeders, as well as the bullets still lodged in him. “Rogers, this is the boring part. I’m sure you’d be more comfortable waiting elsewhere.”

“I’m fine,” he said quietly.

He was a good friend. She’d never doubted that. Even if she could feel him staring at the back of her head. She didn’t think Barnes had any other major bleeders. This would be a long, methodical process but she was confident the worst was over.

Kevin was setting up the blood bag on the IV when she found the first bullet. “It’s too quiet,” she announced. “JARVIS, do you have the soundtrack to _Captain America: The Musical_? I want to see how long Rogers will last.” A moment later the opening bars of “The Star Spangled Man with a Plan” started playing through the intercom. “You’re the best, JARVIS.”

“We aim to please, doctor,” he replied dryly.

At the sound of the music and her joking, the tension level in the room dropped noticeably. Doctors, especially surgeons, were masters of graveyard humor. She was concentrating too hard to talk much. But she knew Barnes would appreciate her choice of music. 

Rogers made it to the opening of Act II when Tiffani finally convinced him to go check in with the team, who would surely be worried. Amanda worked faster with him gone, but still meticulously. They finished the Cap musical and made it through _Fiddler on the Roof_ , _Into the Woods_ and a good chunk of _Follies_ before she finished the last suture. 

She’d started the blood transfusion after finding the second bullet. The serum and his body’s own healing ability was going to be their best ally in the next few days. When she’d checked on the initial aortal wound before closing up she’d found it already far more healed than it should have been. She hovered while Tiffani and Claire bandaged him, then stepped out into the hall, stripping out of her gloves, gown and mask. She needed to find Rogers and go over the next steps with him.

To her surprise, she found him and the rest of the Avengers waiting in the break room down the hall from her OR. He jumped to his feet when he saw her and she paused in the doorway. She didn’t think she’d done an “update the loved ones” talk since her residency. 

She cleared her throat. “He’s fine. Stable. Both bullets fragmented so it took time to remove them but I’m confident I got it all. We’re moving him to one of the exam rooms off the infirmary so I can keep an eye on him.”

“When can I see him?” Rogers asked.

She ran a hand through her hair. “That’s what I need to talk to you about. At this point, I think the best thing for his recovery would be to keep him sedated for a day or two and let his body heal naturally. With the enhancements from the serum his recovery will be shortened drastically. This would let him sleep through the worst of it and probably speed it up even more.”

Rogers studied her a moment. “Why are you asking me?”

“You’re the closest thing to next-of-kin he has. He’s had decisions made for him by doctors and scientists for years, I felt it was important to get your opinion, since I can’t get his.” She glanced at the crowd behind him and lowered her voice. “And I may not be objective where he is concerned.”

His eyes softened and he smiled. “This is what you think is best for him?” She nodded. “Then do it. He trusts you.”

Intellectually, she’d known that. It was still very nice to hear it from someone else. Though it did cause a lump to form in her throat. Suddenly she was bone tired and wanted nothing more than a shower and to sleep. Then she remembered he wouldn’t be there when she slept and for an awful second she thought she was going to cry.

To her horror, Rogers stepped forward and hugged her. She was not a hugger on her best of days, generally trying to wiggle out of them like a cat. But she was exhausted and Rogers was big and solid and reminded her of when her father had held her as a child. So she rested her chin on his shoulder and leaned on him a moment.

He probably would have let her stand there like that the rest of the night. She allowed herself a couple of seconds of it and patted his back. He took the hint and let her go as she stepped away. “My nurse will monitor him overnight. Does anyone else need medical attention?” Room full of shaking heads. “Then I’m going to wish you all a good night.”

“Thank you, Dr. Newbury,” Rogers said quietly. She nodded, offered the room a smile and left, heading for the elevators and her empty bed.

*

Coming out of cryo was a slow, disorienting process. He would become aware of parts of himself slowly and in no particular order. His left foot, then his right shoulder (which ached, which was strange), his nose itched and breathing hurt a little. Then he realized he couldn’t be coming out of cryo. Because he _remembered_.

He remembered the base they had infiltrated, the weapons cache they’d found. They’d destroyed the weapons and run into trouble on the way out. He’d tried to cover the retreat and then there had been pain. And Steve dragging him along looking frightened. It was hazy after that.

But he remembered everything else, too. The team. Steve. The Tower. Who he was and what he fought for. It was all there, a little muddled and fuzzy with sleep and whatever pain medication he must be on. But it was _there_. Not a blank expanse of frustratingly vague feelings and ideas.

He even recognized the faint clicking noise off to his left. Sure enough, when he opened his eyes and turned his head he saw Amanda sitting there, knitting. The lights were dimmed but she had a reading light over her shoulder, illuminating her work. He glanced around, recognizing one of her exam room. He tried to shift, but the muscles in his chest protested. He glanced down to find himself thoroughly bandaged, right arm in a sling.

 The clicking stopped and he looked back to Amanda to find her watching him. He licked dry lips and gave a half smile. “This is where we met,” he rasped.

Her face split into a grin the likes of which he’d never seen from her before. She put her knitting down and stood, coming to his side. “Yes, it is,” she confirmed. She glanced at the monitors connected to him, then touched his arm, fingers a light pressure on the metal. “How’s the pain?”

“Only when I move. How long-?”

“Two days,” she said quietly. “I kept you out to let you heal a little faster.” The light fingers moved to one of the bandages on his chest. “Last dressing change you looked closer to two weeks healed than two days. I figured you’d missed the worst of it and would rather be awake.”

There was something uncertain in her eyes and he tried to reach for her. His right arm immediately reminded him it was injured, so he switched to the left, even though he generally tried not to touch her with that one. She didn’t seem to mind when the metal curled around her hand. “The others okay?”

She covered his hand with her other one. “Every one is fine. They’ve been visiting you. Rogers really wanted to donate some blood for you and I had to give him a lecture on how blood type was still more important than serum.”

Bucky nodded, resting his head back against the pillows. “You tell him I’m fine.”

“I will,” she promised, putting his hand down on the bed and rubbing gently. “Get some more rest. You still have a long recovery.”

“Stay.” He wasn’t entirely sure if he’d said it out loud or not. He knew it had come out order and not question if he had.

He thought he felt her fingers on his forehead, stroking his hair. He was almost certain he heard her say, “I’m not going anywhere.” Then he was sleeping and anything else he heard or felt was probably a dream.

The next time he woke it was daylight and he felt far clearer. Steve was in the chair to his left this time and smiled just as widely when he saw Bucky was awake. “Welcome back.”

Bucky felt himself smile despite himself. “I had them on the ropes.”

Steve’s hand wrapped around his. “I know you did.”

The rest of them all made a point to visit him over the next few days. Barton brought him a stack of crossword puzzle books and a couple with something called sudoku in them. He liked Barton. They were both snipers at heart and had about the same level of tolerance for small talk. 

Romanov came for dinner, sneaking in pierogis and really good coffee. Thor tried to bring him mead, but Tiffani the nurse confiscated it before he could have any. Apparently, they didn’t have medicine contraindications in Asgard.

Banner poked his head in, checked his chart and monitors and told him he was in very good hands, which he’d already known.

Stark came in with a tool kit and checked out his arm without taking it off. Bucky had never thought that would make a difference, but it did. The arm was a part of him, like it or not, and working with it attached made him feel more human and less like a tool to be dismantled. Stark talked through the whole procedure, but didn’t really seem to expect Bucky to engage in the conversation, so he didn’t mind.

And then there was Steve. He brought food, books and magazines. He was as mystified by the sudoku as Bucky was, but he was useful with the crosswords. He was also capable of just sitting there in silence, Steve with his sketch book and Bucky with his preferred entertainment of the moment. It was a relief to have finally found comfortable silence between them.

It was day four or five after he’d first woken up - with the medication and naps he was taking it was hard to keep track. Bucky was starting to feel the first stirrings of cabin fever. Steve had been pretending to draw for almost ten minute now. Bucky wasn’t entirely sure when he’d figured out the difference between actually-drawing pencil scratching and distracted-and-pretending pencil scratching.

Finally he lifted his head and said, “You’re different since you woke up.”

“Bit more perforated,” Bucky said, still looking at his crossword.

“No. I mean you seem. . . friendlier?”

He looked up at that. “Are you implying I wasn’t friendly before?”

“Buck.”

He smiled a little, putting his pencil down. He leaned his head back, trying to figure out how to explain it to him. “Waking up from the sedation felt like waking up from cryo.”

Steve looked vaguely panicked. “We didn’t know. I would never have agreed-”

Bucky waved a hand. “Let me finish. It was like waking up from the cryo, except I could remember everything. How I’d gotten there, where I was, _who_ I was. I knew I’d been unconscious and time had passed, but none of the memories were gone. I was still me.” He twirled his pencil in his fingers. “It made me realize that that was never going to happen again. I was never going to wake up a blank slate again. This is who I am now, for better or worse.” He glanced over at Steve. “I might never get my past back. But my future is my own. It’s not going to be taken away from me.”

Steve’s expression had gone from confused to stricken to smiling while he’d talked. Bucky didn’t think the other man thought much about what had been done to him. He certainly didn’t like talking about it. “You’re one of the team,” Steve said quietly. “Anything happened to you and we’d all be there to get you out.”

That had occurred to him as well. He was no longer a lone asset. None of them trusted him the way Steve did, but he was getting there. Getting shot up watching their backs had gone a long way. And he was learning how to be a teammate again. He thought he and Barton could probably be friends one day. Romanov accepted him, darkness and all, and seemed to like that they could speak Russian together and make the others nervous, even if it was totally innocuous. The idea of having friends and pulling jokes on them was as novel as being able to remember who he was.

“I think I’m just ready to . . . be in the land of the living again,” he said. “Stop being a ghost.” He was always going to be the Winter Soldier. The training was too deeply ingrained to ignore. He still swept rooms and picked out sniping nests. But he was pretty sure Barton and Romanov and even Steve did the same thing and they managed to live relatively normal lives. At least now he was fighting for something he believed in. He didn’t believe in Romanov’s ledger of red; what he’d done was done, willing or not, and he had to live with that. But he could move forward, away from the weapon he’d been. Put the Soldier to good use.

“Speaking of living. . .” Steve said, glancing down at his sketchbook.

That was not a reassuring tone. “What?”

“What’s going on with you and Dr. Newbury?”

He kept his face carefully neutral. “Why do you ask?”

It was obvious that Steve saw right through him, but he answered anyway. “When we brought you in I caught a glimpse of her face, just her eyes, over the surgical mask. She looked on the verge of tears. And then, when she was working on you, when it looked like you might bleed out, she called you ‘Jamie.’ You never let anyone call you that.”

To be honest, he’d never heard _her_ call him that. It was always James. Occasionally Barnes, when she was teasing. No one had really told him how bad it had been; this was the first he’d heard about almost bleeding out. And Amanda had been the one working on him, saving his life. He tried to imagine their positions reversed and couldn’t do it.

She’d visited him every day. During the day it was as a doctor, checking monitors and changing bandages. But in the evenings, after dinner and the last of his other visitors left, she would come with her knitting and her laptop and they would sit and watch a movie, the way they had in her apartment before his last mission. He kept hoping one of these nights she’d be in the pajamas he’d given her, but so far no luck.

None of that meant he had an answer for Steve. He knew the old him had been good with this sort of thing. He was pretty sure Old Him wouldn’t have looked at Amanda twice, though, so it wasn’t exactly something he strove to emulate. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “We’re friends. It might be something more. Someday.”

“I asked around about her,” Steve offered. “She’s well liked, but no one know much about her. I had to get to Maria Hill before finding someone who knew her first name.”

Bucky smiled a little, both at Steve checking up on her and the fact Bucky obviously knew her the best anyway. “It’s Amanda,” he said quietly.

His friend flashed a smile. “Yeah, but do you know her middle name?”

That sounded almost like a challenge. He held up his hand. “Don’t tell me. It’ll be more fun getting it from her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did my best to depict a realistic emergency situation, allowing myself a little leeway given the technological advancements of the MCU. It is remarkably hard to find information about bullet removal surgery.
> 
> If anyone is questioning a research scientist's ability to perform surgery. Amanda's specialty - before Maria hired her for the Avengers - was emergency medicine, which does include basic surgical knowledge. She keeps her skills sharp at a local hospital and the occasional human analog.
> 
> The stuff about surgeons and graveyard humor comes from an acquaintance who works as a surgical nurse and has awesome stories. Amanda is downright warm and fuzzy for a surgeon.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was only able to do one editing pass on this, so I apologize if there's more mistakes than usual.

After Steve left Bucky napped again. He woke up to the feel of Amanda’s hands on his skin. For a moment he thought he was still dreaming, but in his dreams she generally wasn’t changing his bandages so he opened his eyes to look at her.

She didn’t notice his regard immediately, peering at his wounds with what he thought of as her doctor face. Whatever she saw seemed to please her, because she gave a little nod and started taping on the new bandage.

“Still alive?” he asked softly.

She didn’t jump, just tipped her head to look at him over her glasses. “To fight another day,” she responded. “Tomorrow we’re going to get you up and walking around.” She finished her taping and leaned back. “I’ve never watched someone on the serum heal from severe wounds. It really is remarkable.”

He started to respond, then felt something odd against his hand where it lay on his sheets. He glanced down to find his hospital bed now sported a knit blanket. It was red and white chevron pattern with thin black stripes between them to keep it from looking like a candy cane.

“This from you?” he asked, running his right hand over it as best he could.

She glanced down at the blanket, then briefly up at him, not meeting his eyes. “I’d intended it for the armchair in my apartment that you like. But figured it would make it a little cozier in here.” She moved away from his bed to check his monitors. They’d taken his IV out three days ago, but she still put a heart and blood oxygen monitor on him regularly, as well as the blood pressure cuff.

Music was playing in the main room, faint and dreamy through the open door of his recovery room. He didn’t recognize the song, but it sounded like a woman singing about love and fate and missing someone. He watched Amanda unhook the oxygen monitor, her fingers light and soft against his skin. “I don’t understand you,” he said quietly.

She looked up at him, coiling the wires from the monitor over her hand. “I don’t think I’m a mystery.”

“You’re a contradiction,” he told her. He was going to blame his sudden need to figure her out on his recent epiphany and the high levels of pain killer he was on. “You’re a doctor. You don’t do it for fame or accolades, just to heal. You knit blankets and listen to show tunes and jazz music and you twirl your hair when you’re bored.” Her eyes widened at that and he had to smile. “I sat behind you in the other room for months, you think I don’t see your tells?”

Hesitantly, almost as if she didn’t want to come closer, she shifted to lean, then sit on the bed by his hip. “Where’s the contradiction?”

“You don’t want anyone to know it,” he said, studying her. “You keep everyone at arm’s length. Farther. You hide behind sarcasm and sharp intellect. You don’t let anyone in. Steve told me the only person who knows your first name is Hill and I’m betting that was because she hired you. You’re so hard. Were you always like this?”

Her throat worked a little as she swallowed. “No,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t always like this.”

“Was it this?” he asked touching the scar on her cheek.

She leaned into the touch a little so he kept his hand where it was. He couldn’t read her expression, or, more precisely, he didn’t have a word for what he saw there. It was like grief mixed with fear and surprise and longing. Suddenly he regretted starting the conversation that had brought that look to her face. He wanted to fix it.

Very slowly, the lifted a hand and touched the bandage over his shoulder. “This is going to scar,” she said, voice still soft. “But with exercise and care it won’t affect movement. The muscle underneath will still be soft, flexible.” Light fingers skimmed over his chest and traced the scars that rimmed the seam where his metal arm met his flesh. “These scars are hard. Multiple surgeries, multiple cuts. The skin and muscle grew layers of scar tissue, overlapping in an effort to protect itself.”

His finger swept the length of her own scar, almost unconsciously. She smiled a little. “It wasn’t just one thing. It was my mother dying. Taking care of my sisters while my dad decided if he was going to join her or not. Getting bullied at school. Dealing with a different kind of bully in med school. Africa, even before I was attacked, was brutal and heart breaking. Even up to SHIELD falling.” She flattened her hand on his skin, palm over the thud of his heart. For a moment the grief on her face grew stronger. “Life kept cutting me. So I grew hard to protect myself.”

He let his hand drop to cover hers on his chest. “You let me in. Right from the start.” It was only in hindsight he could see it. Letting him into her infirmary, her space. Dragging him out to lunch, showing him movies she’d grown up watching. He knew more about her than people she’d worked with for years. “Why?”

She smiled and tilted her head. “Recognized a kindred spirit? You needed someone to help you without fussing. Pretty much my ideal relationship.”

“I do hate fuss,” he agreed.

“Knitting blankets is as close to fuss as I get.”

“And hot cocoa.”

Her smile widened a little. “That, too.”

*

Amanda hovered outside the door to her infirmary. She needed to go inside. Check her email. Give James his breakfast. And then start his PT. It was time to get him on his feet and walking. Get him out of the recovery room and back to his apartment. They weren’t equipped for long term care in the infirmary. If he was any of the non-serum Avengers he would have been moved to a proper hospital days ago. He was going to start going stir crazy, if he wasn’t already. He’d probably be thrilled to be up and out of infirmary.

Maybe he already was stir crazy. It would explain the conversation from last night.  
 Said conversation was why she was out in the hallway and not getting on with her day. She wasn’t a coward about many things. She didn’t run from spiders or bees. She didn’t mid heights or small spaces. Blood, violence, family holiday dinners, none of it bothered her. Whatever she and James now seemed to be dancing around terrified her.

She hadn’t intended to let him in. Hadn’t meant to like him, to become friends. To find herself wanting to be more than that. She was sure, now, that he shared that desire. He’d let her in just as much as she had him. He touched her easily, naturally. She didn’t know how that had happened. How any of it had happened.

 And she had no idea what to do next.

_Well, you should probably start by walking into the fucking room._

She sighed and pushed the door open, dropping her bag at her desk before going into James’ room. He was awake, reading a thick book that barely fit in his hand and drinking what looked like a smoothie. “Ah, someone brought you breakfast?”

“I think Romanov shows concern through food.” He put the book down at watched her, expression almost wary. “When can I get out of here?”

And that would be the stir crazy. She picked up his chart and checked the readings Tiffani had done over night. Her nurse and techs would be happy to have him out of recovery, too. The night shifts they’d been rotating weren’t fun for anyone.

His numbers were steady across the board. No reason not to move forward. “We’re going to start with getting out out of bed. Then we can talk about moving you back home.”

He looked a little skeptical at the word home but put his smoothie down when she came over to the side of the bed. She helped him get the blanket and sheets down and he swung his sweat pant clad legs over the side of the bed. She found the pedal on the side of the bed and lowered it till his feet hit the ground. “Go slow,” she warned. “Hang onto me if you need.”  
 The skeptical look came back and she gave him her most serious doctor face. “I’m tougher than I look.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he muttered. He slipped off the bed and stood. He wobbled slightly and grabbed her shoulder, looking more surprised than concerned or pained.

“Told you.” She covered his hand with hers and shuffled back. “Slow,” she reminded him as he moved with her.

“Why is this so difficult? I wasn’t shot in the leg.”

“You’ve been lying down for five days. Also, you’re using your core muscles to stand up right, which got a little beat up in surgery.” She had been watching his legs move. When she looked up she was a little flustered at how close he was. With him barefoot they were eye to eye.

The corner of his mouth quirked up, as if he had just realized it, too. He shifted his hand on her shoulder and they took another step, her moving backwards, him forwards. “How long till I’m not walking like an old man?”

“You are an old man,” she teased.

“Doesn’t mean I have to walk like one.”

She cleared her throat. “Considering you’re all but recovered from your gun shot wounds to the chest I’d imagine you’ll be boxing and doing flips in the air in a week or two.”

“Have you been watching my combat videos again, Doc?” There was a spark in his eyes she couldn’t name and didn’t entirely trust. He was staring at her a little too intently. Like a big cat who’d spotted something in the grass that might or might not end up dinner.

“I-” Her back came up short against the wall of the room. James took another step and braced the hand not on her shoulder against the wall by her waist, effectively caging her. The little half smile he’d been wearing spread, turning almost smug.

She gaped at him. “You did that on purpose.”

“I’m a brilliant strategist,” he informed her, gaze not wavering.

“Does your chest even hurt?”

He took another step towards her, crowding her. “A little bit.”

She had no idea what to do with her hands. She had no idea what to do, period. Other than stare at him and wonder how, exactly, after almost a week in bed he smelled so damn good.

He saved her from having to come up something by leaning in the last few inches and kissing her.

It short circuited her thought process, allowing her instinct to take over. And that, at least, seemed to know exactly what to do. She slid her hands up, burying one in his hair and cupping the other one against his jaw. His stubble rasped against her palm and chin. She felt his hand leave the wall and wrap around her waist, tugging her against his chest. The other hand moved from her shoulder to the back of her head, freeing her hair from its clip. She heard the little piece of plastic clatter on the ground as he sifted her hair through his fingers.

He lifted his head just enough to change the angle of the kiss, deepening it. Her toes curled in her practical doctor shoes and she made an undignified noise in her throat, hand fisting in his hair. A groan rumbled in his chest. The arm around her waist tightened. She recalled all those months ago, when he’d grabbed her arm and she’d momentarily felt delicate and fragile. That had been nothing compared to this; pressed against the wall of muscle that was his chest, with a literal band of steel wrapped around her. She could probably get used to this.

An eternity later, he lifted his head and looked at her, eyes hooded. “Well,” he said roughly. “You’re not slapping me.”

She blinked rapidly a few times, then licked her lips in an effort to get moisture in her mouth. “I don’t know they did it in the forties, but. . .”

He grinned and shook his head a little. “You are such a pain in the ass,” he muttered before kissing her again.

 As endearments went, it was very them.

This time when his arm tightened she felt her feet lift and pushed away. “No. No heavy lifting.”

“You aren’t heavy,” he protested as she pushed him back towards the bed.

They would discuss idle flattery later. Though, he could rip doors off cars so maybe he meant it. “Bed.” He sat when his legs came up against it, still grinning. She pointed a finger at him to head off what was almost certainly an inappropriate comment. “Don’t you dare.”

“If I stay in bed can I kiss you again?”

She blew out a breath, despite wanting to agree enthusiastically. “You put me in a very strange ethical grey area.” The scold was softened a bit by her stroking his hair off his face.

He leaned into her hand. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “Maybe I shouldn’t have-”

“No. I’m glad you did.” She swallowed hard. “Just. . . maybe we should wait until you’re not an active patient.”

He found her hip with his right hand, fingers toying with the hem of her shirt. She hadn’t even remembered to put on her lab coat before coming in. “And after that?”

She wound strands of his hair around her fingers. It was like the kiss had snapped some sort of boundary they’d had between them and now they couldn’t stop touching the other. His fingers moving on her hip didn’t set off the usual discomfort other touches did. “There hasn’t been anyone since the attack in Africa.”

His brow furrowed and he tipped his head back, looking at her thoughtfully. “Six years?”  
 “Almost seven.”

That half smile quirked his lips again. “Think I got you beat.”

That surprised a laugh out of her. “You make an excellent point. Obviously, I should be more concerned about your virtue.”

His hand slid back to grab her ass. “What virtue?”

She swatted at his hand futilely, but she was laughing again. “After you are back in your apartment,” she said, going back to his question. “You can enlighten me as to how they did it in the forties.”

His pressed a kiss to her throat, over the pounding of her pulse. His other hand curled around her other hip. “I’d rather you showed me how they do it now.”

Amanda sighed and leaned on him, pressing her face into his hair. For a moment she just stayed like that, let herself enjoy being held. He seemed to sense the change in her because he didn’t tease her further, just let her be silent. The decision suddenly seemed momentous. She knew what her answer was, but not if it was a good idea or not. Neither of them were the healthiest people, mentally. He probably needed someone softer, gentler. Who wasn’t carrying her own demons around with her.

_Well, too fucking bad._

She leaned back and kissed him deeply. “Cultural exchange it is.”


	12. Chapter 12

Amanda signed his discharge paperwork the next day. She messaged Rogers to walk with him back to his apartment to save him the indignity of a wheelchair. The look James gave her as his friend led him out of the infirmary told her he knew she was doing a little avoidance strategy. Sure enough, he texted her just before dinner.

_Steve has decided to crash on my couch my first night home. Did you put ideas in his head?_

She grinned at her phone because she could _hear_ the exact tone he would have used had he been standing next to her.

_So suspicious. I may have muttered something about transitional monitoring. Under my breath. In his earshot._

_You’d have made a good supervillain._

_Why the past tense? I have time._

There was a long pause. She was eating pad thai on her couch and watching _The Princess Bride_ when her phone buzzed again. She had to get up and retrieve it from her desk where it was charging. She must like him if she was willing to vacate her nest once she’d made it. _We’ve negotiated that this is just for tonight. Can’t get rid of me that easy, darlin’._

Good lord, the man was almost charming in print. She wondered if he’d written love letters with some pretty, doe-eyed forties dame with perfect hair and a skirt shockingly above the knee. _I suppose I’ll have to take tomorrow night’s shift?_

Another long pause. She was rinsing her food containers out before recycling them when the phone buzzed. She forced herself to finish the task before drying her hands off to pick up the phone. _Damn right. I haven’t seen you in those pajamas yet._

She felt her cheeks heat a little. Fifteen years ago, had she been in this situation, she probably would have sent him a picture of herself in said pajamas. Then probably one of her taking them off. But she’d been younger and bolder then. She was too old to be taking sexy selfies of herself. And this - whatever it was - was very new. And Captain America was in his apartment and she was fairly certain she would die of humiliation if he caught an eyeful of said selfie. They were probably going to be outed to the team (and all of her employees) fairly quickly. The Tower was worse than a college dorm for gossip. But for now she would try to keep this just between themselves. While they figured it out.

_Good night, James._

_Sweet dreams, sweetheart._

Twenty-four hours later she stood in front of his door with two boxes of pizza and a small overnight bag. She was as nervous as she had ever been before a date and prayed to whatever deity might be listening that no one walked by while she waited for him to answer her knock.

To her relief, he opened the door almost immediately, stepping back for her to enter. The door clicked behind her and he caught her arm, turning her so he could kiss her.  
 She let her bag drop to bury her hand in his hair but held the other arm out away from him, balancing the pizza boxes on her palm. He explored her mouth a moment, holding her tight against his body. When he lifted his head, he glanced over at the pizza boxes and smirked. “I like your priorities.”

“I took a cab out to Brooklyn for those, they are not ending up on the floor.”

He took the boxes from her. She saw him notice her bag, but he didn’t comment, heading towards the kitchen. “Brooklyn?”

“Captain Rogers has a particular pizza place he insists is the best in the city.” She nudged the bag up against the wall and followed him. “I thought, having grown up in the same area, you might agree.”

The pizzas went on his table and he caught her around the waist again. “He’d like it if you called him Steve.”

She would not have expected him to be this handsy. Normally, this much contact set her on edge, but the way he touched her soothed far more than it irritated. She wound both arms around his neck. “First name basis with one living legend is quite enough, thank you,” she said.

He tugged the clip out of her hair and ran his fingers through it, spreading it over her back. “I told him about us. He’s happy. Promised to keep it quiet.”

She liked that he didn’t want gossip anymore than she did. Though she was fairly sure the teasing would be worse for him than her. She imagined there was a lot of manly ribbing on the rides to and from missions. “I told Tiffani,” she confessed. 

“How did she react?”

“She made a noise I believe was only audible to dogs.” He chuckled, winding a lock of her hair over his finger. She studied him a moment. “You didn’t come visit me. I had your chair ready and everything.”

He met her gaze, eyes intense and very blue. “Thought you needed space. What with foisting me off on Steve last night.”

Well, she didn’t like him because he was stupid. “I needed to do some thinking,” she admitted. “But for the record, I can do that with you in the room. Assuming you aren’t doing anything to distract me.”

His eyes darkened a little and he tugged on the lock of hair he held. “Am I distracting?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t play coy, Barnes, it doesn’t become you.”

That got her his little smirk and he leaned in to kiss her again. This one was different, deeper, hotter. She shuddered and his arm tightened on her. At his urging, she opened her mouth to him, tongue stroking along his. He backed her up until she hit the kitchen counter, then he bracketed her hips and lifted her up onto it, stepping between her legs so he could keep kissing her.

The position put her higher then him. She cupped his face in her hands, holding him to her. She didn’t consider herself an expert by any stretch of the meaning, but she felt confident in her assessment that her was a really, _really_ good kisser.

She felt his hand fist in the back of her shirt - the left hand. The fabric tightened on her shoulders and chest and a second later she heard the sound of seams tearing.

The noise made him loosen his hand, lifting his mouth off hers to murmur, “Sorry,” before running a line of kisses down her throat.

One day, she was going to let him shred whatever she was wearing. She’d go buy something cheap just for the occasion. She stroked her hands through his hair and down his arms as he explored her neck.

She felt him slid his right hand under her shirt and blurted out, “I’m not going to have sex with you tonight.”

His hand froze and he shifted back a little. “I didn’t think you would.”

Her brow furrowed. “Really?”

“I don’t think I’m the kind of guy who goes from first kiss to naked in forty eight hours. I’m certain you’re not that kind of girl.”

She was pretty sure she was blushing and found herself glad he had his face still buried in her neck. “It’s not as uncommon as you might think.” She kissed the top of his head. “But thank you.”

He shrugged, resting his head on her shoulder. “It took us nine months to get to the kiss. I figure the rest will come in time.” His hand moved farther under her shirt. “Seeing you topless would make my day, though.”

Well, if he was going to ask nicely. She leaned back as far as she could without smacking her head against the cabinets and tugged her t-shirt up and off. He braced his hands on the counter beside her legs, studying her. The heat in his gaze sent a shiver through her, tightening her nipples against she satin of her bra. His mouth quirked at the sight and he lifted a hand to tug a strap down.

His left slid up to fiddle with the hooks at the back. She squeaked and shied away for the touch. “Christ that’s cold.” He grinned and flattened it on her back and she swatted him. “Seriously, I’m going to ask Stark to put a heater in that next time he’s tinkering.”

Still chuckling, he bent and kissed her shoulder. The hand had warmed to her skin and she relaxed again. A gentle tug at his shirt got him to pull it off. Then she could explore him while he got his fill of her. It was very slow, like they had all the time in the world. Other then occasionally tracing the band he never even attempted to take her bra off, apparently content to draw out each step of whatever courtship they were engaging in.

Eventually, they remembered the pizza, eating it topless at his kitchen table. It was cold, having sat through a cab ride and a make-out session, but it was still really good.

After cleaning up from dinner she took her bag into the bedroom and changed into her star pajamas. The look he gave her when she came out heated her skin and she expected their usual movie watching to devolve into some more heavy petting. But he stayed firmly on his end of the couch, their only contact her toes buried under his leg for warmth.

Just after midnight, they retired to his bed, the blanket she’d knit him spread across it. It was late July, but the Tower was thoroughly air conditioned and the extra warmth would be nice. He curled around her after she got settled, pressing his face into her hair. It was possessive, protective and she was surprised at how much she liked it.  
   
They lay in silence a moment, then she said, “One question?”

His “Hmm?” was muffled in her hair.

 “Why have we been sleeping in my bed when yours is so fucking comfortable?”

He laughed and kissed the back of her neck. “Pain in the ass,” he said affectionately.


	13. Chapter 13

Bucky felt fairly silly walking through the halls of the Tower with a bouquet of flowers in one hand. He had absolutely no idea what he was going to do if anyone saw him. Probably toss them into an open door and keep walking. Then kill Steve for putting the idea in his head.

Fortunately, he didn’t cross anyone he knew before reaching the infirmary. Unfortunately, Amanda wasn’t there, only her rather surprised looking nurse. She looked up when he entered, glanced at the bunch of violets, grinned and said, “She’s in the lab. Down the hall.” She pointed helpfully.

He nodded and went three doors down to the lab, which was mercifully empty except for Amanda. She was sitting on the ground next to a maze made of cardboard, taking notes as she watched a rat run through it. She didn’t look up when he entered and he saw a white cord leading to an earbud tucked in her ear.

He moved silently to her left side and crouched, tugging the cord so the headphone popped out. She jumped and looked at him, first surprised, then pleased. She smacked his chest with the back of her hand. “That’s not nice.”

“You should have better situational awareness.”

Her nose scrunched. “I was zoning,” she admitted. She glanced down and noticed the violets, then looked back at him, eyes wide.

He cleared his throat. “It’s been a month. Since. . . we. . . kissed.”

“So you brought me flowers?” He nodded slowly, suddenly realizing this had been a stupid idea. “Was this Steve’s idea?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, making an effort not to snap.

Her face softened and she tucked her pen under the clip of the clip board before reaching out to take the flowers from him. She sniffed them lightly, eyes closed, then smiled at him again. “C’mere.” He bent as she stretched up and she kissed him. The flowers went in her lap so she could touch his face lightly, cupping his cheek as he sank into the kiss.

When he lifted his head she grinned. “They’re lovely. Thank you. Don’t listen to Steve anymore.”

“Agreed.” He dropped out of his crouch to sit next to her, peering at the rat. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to find rats that are intelligent, healthy and docile. A remarkably difficult combination to find, apparently.”

The current rat seemed to have gotten distracted halfway through the challenge and was grooming itself. “Why?”

“Next stage of my experiments is testing it on rats,” she explained, checking a stop watch and sighing. “At this point I’m just finding breeding stock. I want to have access to the test subjects from birth.”

He watched the rat take a few more steps, look around, then turn and double back the way it came. Next to him, Amanda sighed again. “This one’s not looking good.”

“No. No, it isn’t.” She clicked the stop watch and reached for the rat, making a kissy noise at it as she scooped it up and returned it to a cage. She shuffled a new piece of paper to the top of her clipboard and plucked a new rat out to start the maze. “I suppose if I’m already breeding I could just go for one of the temperament requirements and hope I get some good combination in the offspring.”

This rat seemed to be doing better, zipping around turns and backtracking only when it hit a dead end. Bucky felt an odd amount of kinship watching it. “Steve told me Erskine thought that the serum amplified whatever the the subject was at his core.”

She glanced at him. “Yes. He expressed similar theories in his notes.”

“What do you think?”

“Well, he gets a little metaphysical for my taste. I don’t have a lot of patience for souls and ‘heart’ in my scientific papers. But there’s merit to the basic idea. Any kind of power tends to bring out a person’s core personality.” The rat reached the end of the maze and began eating the dollop of peanut butter there. Amanda stopped the watch, made an impressed face and wrote on her clipboard. “Heads of companies become corrupt or give to charity. Lottery winners pay off debt or buy yachts and drugs. Make someone super strong he becomes a hero or a villain. Psychologically and anthropologically it makes sense.”

He watched her scoop up the rat, mark its back with a bit of dye and put it in a different cage before grabbing another one. “What does that say about me, then?” he asked.

Amanda looked up at him sharply. “The Soldier is not a natural progression of your personality, it’s what Hydra and the Soviets shaped you into. Using brutal and medically unsound techniques. You can’t take that as any sort of marker of what kind of man you are.”

“It’s the only marker I have.”

She refilled the peanut butter and set the rat at the start, beginning the timer. Then she looked at him. “All evidence says you received the majority of your serum in Germany before Steve saved you. It’s why you survived the fall from the train. If you want a marker, use your behavior with the Howling Commandos. You would have been experiencing the serums effects with no interference from Hydra.”

He liked how fiercely she defended him. Steve did the same thing, if Bucky dared have a moment of self-doubt or depreciation. But he did it out of loyalty and love. Amanda did it using logic and science. And managed to make him feel far better. “I’m not watching those movies again.”

That made her smile. “I don’t blame you.” She watched her rat scoot through the maze corridors. “Reports from the other squad members paint you as loyal, protective and determined. You were a good tactician, quick on your feet. As a sniper the rest of them depended on you to have their backs and you never let them down.” He noticed her stroke one of the violets, ruffling the petals. She looked embarrassed when she met his eyes again. “Haven’t you read your military file?”

He shook his head. “Just the write up at the Smithsonian.”

“Well, you might want to look through it. You come off rather well,” she added, leaning over to kiss him.

He lifted a hand to take her hair down but she ducked away before he could, shaking a chiding finger at him. He smiled and stole another kiss. “On that topic. I had an ulterior motive for the flowers.”

She smirked. “I knew Steve couldn’t be that persuasive. What are you buttering me up for?”

“There’s a mission in Russia coming up. Supposed to go live next week.”

“And you need your post-injury medical clearance,” she filled in.

“I’d be an asset. And I’m going a little nuts being stuck here.”

She stared at the rat, scowling a moment. He was pretty sure it wasn’t the rodent that angered her, so he let her process. Said rat had gotten stuck about two thirds through the maze, and was sniffing frantically trying to find its way. Bucky had to fight an urge to help it along.

“I’ll talk to Tiffani,” Amanda said finally. “She can schedule it with you. We’ll make sure to do it in plenty of time for you to make the mission.”

“I don’t mind if you do it,” he said, surprised she’d shift it over to her nurse.

“The only way this -” She gestured between them. “Is going to work is if you get no special treatment. Since a very large part of me wants to ensure you never get near gunfire again I don’t think I can be impartial about sending you back in the field. I may skew results subconsciously.” She looked over at him. “Tiffani can handle it. She know the parameters.”

He allowed himself a moment of quiet preening that he could potentially make his logical doctor protective enough to fudge an official report. He snagged the back of her neck with his metal hand and tugged her in for a kiss. “I’ll go talk to the nurse. I don’t think she’s scared of me anymore.”

Amanda chuckled and rested her forehead on his. “She’s tougher than she looks. Good luck.” He kissed her again and stood in one smooth motion that she didn’t even pretend not to watch. “Thank you again for the flowers,” she added.

“You’re welcome,” he said with a little nod before heading out.

He passed with flying colors and was on the roster for the Russian mission the next day. Amanda had at least feigned excitement for him, which he’d appreciated. He could tell she was worried, so he tried not to talk about the impending trip. If she noticed his avoidance, she didn’t comment.

The night before the team was scheduled to leave he woke suddenly, momentarily disoriented. Initially, he assumed he’d had a nightmare, the details lost when he woke. Then he registered Amanda’s breathing, fast and rough, as if she was in pain. His eye focused in the dim light and found her curled on her side, facing him, hands tangled in the fabric of his shirt. Her eyes were closed in sleep, but her face looked pained. 

He lifted a hand to stroke her hair. “Hey. Amanda. Wake up, darlin’. It’s all right. Wake up.”

She stiffened, sucking in a sharp breath as she woke. She blinked a few times, confusion drawing her brows together. After a moment, she looked up and seemed to focus on his face, though she still looked worried. He shifted to touch the little line between her brows. “Bad dream?”

More blinking. She really didn’t wake up easy. Finally, she nodded. “I think so. I don’t really remember it.” She seemed to notice she was still clutching his shirt and slowly uncurled her fingers, smoothing the fabric down. “Sorry.”

He snorted and tugged her closer. He could see her pulse pounding in her throat, still rapid. “You want to talk?”

She shook her head, winding her arm around him. “I think you were in it.”

There was nothing in her tone that told him what the context had been. He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Was I. . . did I hurt you?”

“No!” She tipped her head back to look at him and repeated, softly, “No. They were hurting you. Faceless men in white coats. Experimenting on you and I couldn’t help you.” She resettled, resting her head on his shoulder. “I’ve been reading the old Hydra files, plus moving forward on my work and you going on mission in the morning. . . must have all tangled together.”

He cupped the back of her head, rubbed her neck gently. This was not how he’d thought it might go, him comforting her over a nightmare. She seemed to soothe his bad dreams before he even had them. Since he’d started sharing her bed he’d slept soundly. If nightmares came he didn’t remember them. It made sense that she had troubled sleep; he was just surprised that they were about him.

Pressing a kiss to her ear he murmured, “I know if anything happened to me you’d be on the front lines to save me.”

She chuckled, arm tightening on him. “Probably have to fight Steve for the honor.”

“He knows how to share.” He tugged her hair lightly so she tipped her head back. He swore there were tear tracks on her cheek. He ignored it for the sake of her dignity and dipped his head down to kiss her.

They had generally avoided kissing in bed. He didn’t want to rush her and it was far too easy to get carried away once he started. He’d meant it as comfort, a connection in the dark to help calm her down. A way to tell her how touched her was that she would fight for him. That the idea of him hurting caused her pain. He was still getting used to the idea that there was someone other than Steve who felt that way. For good or ill, he loved that he brought out that side of her.

It started out as innocent comfort, but it rather quickly took on a life of its own. He wasn’t entirely sure who deepened it. Maybe neither of them did. Maybe it was just their repressed desire finally bubbling over. Either way, he found himself rolling so she was beneath him as he kissed her roughly, tongue delving deep into her mouth.

She made a noise in her throat, arching into him. He expected her to protest, to stop him. But she clutched at his back, one hand tangled in his hair, holding his mouth to hers. She nipped at his lower lip, sucking it between her teeth and he groaned. 

Most of the time he barely thought about his cybernetic arm. Sometimes, he even enjoyed what he could do with it. But right then he would have given anything to have a flesh and blood arm so he could feel her properly. He could sense pressure, knew he wasn’t hurting her or at risk of ripping her clothes. But he couldn’t feel the texture of her skin or the slide of silk against it.

Her hands had worked their way under his shirt and were stroking his back, soft fingers tracing the bumps of his spine, the wing of his shoulder blade. He felt her trace the line of a scar and shivered at the light touch. He shifted, bracing himself on his left arm and used his right hand to unbutton her pajama top, just enough he could slip the hand inside and cup her breast.

She gasped and he lifted his head a little so he could watch her as he stroked and shaped the globe. Her eyes were wide and dark in the dim light. He scraped his thumb over her nipple and her mouth dropped open slightly. He couldn’t resist kissing her again, nibbling at her swollen bottom lip.

He wanted her. He honestly didn’t remember ever wanting anyone the way he wanted her. He wanted to strip away all her hard edges and have her just like this, soft and open and passionate. No one got to see her like this except him. This was his Amanda and he bet half the building wouldn’t even believe she existed. 

It would be so easy. Just stroke his hand down her body and into the pajama bottoms and tease her there, sink his fingers into her heat and let everything spiral out of control. The man he’d been might have done it, take the advantage while he had it. But he wasn’t that guy anymore. So he gave her breast one last stroke and slid his hand out of her top, doing the buttons back up.

She blinked in confusion. “Wha-”

He shifted off of her, taking deep breaths and mentally disassembling a sniper rifle to distract himself. Now would be a great time to have an ugly Aunt Edna he could remember. When he felt a little more in control he gave her a light, chaste kiss. “You are the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” he told her honestly. “But I am not breaking a seventy year dry spell with a quickie at four am when you’ve had a nightmare and I have work in the morning.” He heard her snort a laugh and relaxed. “We both deserve better,” he added softly.

She stroked a hand through his hair. “Well. Now I’m really looking forward to the end of your mission.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm such a tease. *evil giggle*


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My buffer for this story is getting thin and sickly so I may miss an update in the next week or two. I'll keep you posted here or on Tumblr.

The mission was exhausting. Mixed up coordinates had lead to a two day hike in the Russian backwoods. The Hydra cell had been well bunkered and they’d spent almost another full day in stalemate before Barton had found a weak spot and they’d managed to raid it properly. The fire fight itself had been rather anticlimactic. Now they were headed home, exhausted, running of energy bars and the dregs of adrenaline.

It was one am in New York and God knew how late to his internal clock. He was debating whether it was worth slipping into bed with Amanda or if he was tired enough to try sleeping alone. He was certainly in no shape to continue what they’d started the other night. Another night of chaste sleep might kill one or both of them.

He hadn’t come to a decision by the time the jet landed. Maybe he’d just stagger into the elevator and see where it took him.

The others took a minute to gather up their gear, but he was ready to go by the time the gangplank opened and was heading out by the time it his the floor. He got to the end and stopped in his tracks.

There was a bright red line painted onto the floor of the hanger, a warning line beyond which one could be assumed safe from jetwash or rotors or other hazards. The team had dubbed it the ‘Wife Line’ because it was where Ms. Potts or Dr. Foster (or occasionally Barton or Romanov if one had gone on mission without the other) waited for their respective partner to disembark. Since neither Stark nor Thor (and both Barton and Romanov) had come along he’d expected the line to be unmanned, especially at this time of night.

Except standing there in faded grey sweat pants, a well-worn Stanford tank top, and a grey and black flannel shirt was Amanda, bare toes curling on the painted metal floor. She smiled when she saw him and he remembered to keep walking, not stopping till he was standing in front of her. “Hello, beautiful,” he said.

The smile widened. “I was told this is where I should stand.”

“By whom?”

“Banner and Stark.”

Apparently, they weren’t being as subtle about their relationship as they’d thought. Or the men were just being troublemakers. “Wanted to meet my plane?”

“Well. It’s your first mission back. Seemed like a good idea to be on hand in case there’d been problems.” She tilted her head, eyes narrowed. “Something about the look in your eye worries me.”

“I’m thinking of kissing you.”

Her expression softened, cheeks pinking. “I might like that.”

He decided to press his luck. “Also thinking about dipping you like that V-E day picture.”

“That I’ll probably hate.”

“Eh, you’ll get over it.” She laughed and wound her arms around his neck as he caught her waist and tugged her close enough to kiss. As promised, he wrapped his arms around her, splaying his hand on her back and dipped her. She giggled a little against his mouth before kissing him again. And for a moment, there was no one in the world but the two of them.

Until he heard Romanov walk past them muttering, “Fucking _finally_.”

After that, he was laughing too hard to kiss her any longer. So he straightened them both and just held her for a moment, breathing in the tropical scent of her lotion.

She leaned away and yawned. “I’m exhausted. Come to bed.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders as they headed for the elevator.

*

The next day was Sunday but Amanda woke early, despite not getting to bed until almost two. James was still asleep beside her and didn’t wake, even when she kissed his cheek. She watched him sleep for a moment, smiling to herself, then carefully climbed out of bed. The gym would almost certainly be empty this early on a Sunday. She could get in her treadmill time and return with doughnuts. Possibly before he woke up.

The gym was, in fact, all hers. She tweaked the sound system to play something loud and 80s and decided to warm up on the punching bags. With James injured their training had been put on hold. She suspected with her live trials coming up she might need the cathartic release of pummeling things again.

 She wrapped her hands carefully and lined up with the heavy bag farthest from the door. The music made her feel vaguely like a bad Rocky remake, but she came to the decision that that was a feature, not a bug.

It took a few minutes to get into her rhythm, but once she found it she kind of zoned, mind wandering to her rats and planning the next stage of her work.

Which was why she was surprised when an arm wrapped around her waist and James said in her ear, “You’re still lifting your shoulder.” Her breath caught in her throat as he nuzzled her and curved his other hand over her shoulder, pressing it down. “Throw the punch.”

Intensely aware of him pressed against her, she obeyed, his hand forcing her shoulder to stay in line with her arm and not lift to her ear.

“Better,” he said. He released her shoulder and wrapped his other arm around her. “Trying to ditch me, beautiful?”

“You were still asleep,” she said. “Seemed like you needed your rest.”

“Hmph.” He pressed his face into her hair a moment. “I suppose I could use a work out, too.”

His tone sent a shiver of heat through her, just as much as the words themselves. He was no longer allowed to claim he didn’t know what he was doing with women. He pressed a kiss on the back of her neck and released her, striding over to the weight machines. She watched him load a positively obscene amount of weights on one but turned before he could start his set. She stared at the tan canvas bag a moment, then heard the clink of the machine. She started to pound the bag again, careful to keep her shoulders down as she did so.

She barely made it through the next song before stopping to get a drink of water and unwrap her hands. Her gaze strayed to James as she did so. He had his back to her and the ripple of muscle as he worked was mesmerizing.

_”You are the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”_

All at once, she could feel his hands on her again, his mouth urgent against hers. This was the room she’d first realized she was attracted to him. The first time she’d watched him work out and become distracted by the way he moved. Then, it had made her feel awkward, like the anti-social teenager she’d been. Now it just made her _want_. Made her feel sexy and passionate, things she’d never been. Except, maybe, with him. She was tired of being cautious, of protecting herself but denying herself. 

She put her water bottle down and strode towards him. She didn’t have his skill for stealth and he reset the weight bar just before she reached him, half turning to watch her. She didn’t break her stride until she was right in front of him. When she could catch his face in her hands and kiss him roughly.

He groaned and wrapped his arms around her, crushing her against his chest. One hand slid down, cupping her ass, half lifting her. She twined her fingers in his hair, pressing her body against the length of his. Metal and leather touched the skin of her back and she knew he’d worked his hand under her shirt.

 “Downstairs,” she whispered on his mouth. He made a discontented noise, fingers digging into her ass. “I am not ending a seven year dry spell in the gym. I don’t know how often they clean these mats.” She reached behind herself to catch his hand and spun out of his grip, dragging him along. “Your apartment’s closer to the elevator.”

The ride down was a blur. He stood behind her again, arm locked around her waist, kissing her neck and shoulder. When they reached his door it occurred to her that he probably didn’t have his key with him, but the door opened under her fingers. She was fairly certain JARVIS had had something to do with that and she made a mental note to find out if there was someway of thanking him for his attentive service.

Once inside, he caught her and spun her, mouth coming down on hers as he pinned her to the door, one thigh braced between her legs. She gasped on his mouth, rocking a little. She was already damp from his kisses and the friction sent heat rushing through her. His hand fisted in the front of her shirt, pulling roughly. The straps of the tank top dug into her shoulders a moment, then the seams gave and the garment tore.

James lifted his head and looked at the scrap of cotton he was holding, then glanced at her warily. She was having trouble catching her breath. She didn’t think anything have ever turned her on more. “I am only wearing disposable shirts from now on,” she told him and grabbed the front of his shirt to haul him back to her mouth. James growled and dropped the shirt, sweeping his arm under her legs to scoop her up. He carried her through the living room back to his bedroom without breaking the kiss or looking where he was going.

He dropped her on the bed hard enough she bounced, then came down on top of her, his full weight pressing her deep into the mattress. She yanked his shirt up and he leaned back just long enough to let her peel it off before dipping his head down to kiss her throat. He gripped the edge of her sports bra and she had just enough sense to swat his hand away. “Nope, this was expensive and hard to find in my size.” She crossed her arms, grabbed the bottom of the bra and yanked it gracelessly over her head, tossing it aside.

For a moment he just looked at her, studying her as if she was the only woman he’d ever seen. Which, granted, given his memory issues, she sort of was. Awful connotations aside, it was not a look she was used to getting. It heated her skin and melted her a little inside. When he lowered his mouth to kiss the soft skin of her breast there was an almost reverence to it. Then he took her nipple between his teeth and tugged and her thoughts scattered.

She dug her hands into his hair, though she tried not to grip too tightly. His right hand came up and shaped her other breast, stroking and tugging until he was ready to bring his mouth over. She felt fingers of his left hand curl into the waistband of her yoga pants and the new sensation, plus the anticipation of what he’d do next, caused a noise that was almost a whimper to bubble out of her.

He froze and lifted his head a little, gaze on her face. There was something different in his eyes, something cool and remote. They looked as they had when he’d rescued her in the forest of Romania. The Soldier’s eyes.

His hand had stopped moving, but she could still feel the metal and leather pressed against her belly. Fighting down a thread of panic, she shifted her hand and touched his jaw. “Jamie. Come back to me.”

He blinked and when his eyes opened they were his again. His breath came out in a rush and he rested his forehead on hers. “Sorry.”

“You all right?” she asked softly.

“Yeah. It’s nothing. I just-” He cut himself off and she saw and felt his jaw tighten.

She stroked her thumb along his cheekbone, wracking her brain to try to figure out what had set him off. Finally, she ventured, “Sex noises sound a lot like someone in pain?” He nodded sharply, shifting to press his face into her shoulder.

She sighed and stroked his hair, pressing a kiss to his temple. Nothing was ever going to be simple with them. She’d known that from the start. “I could be quiet,” she offered. It would be difficult, but she thought she could manage it.

He huffed out a breath and lifted his head to look at her. “No,” he said softly. He kissed her, hot and urgent. She felt his hand tug her pants and she lifted her hips instinctively, letting him slide them down. “Make noise,” he told her. “I want to hear you.” 

Cool metal fingers slid through damp folds to her sex. She sucked in a sharp breath at the sensation, eyes wide. He was watching her reaction and repeated the motion. “This all right?” She nodded, not trusting her voice, and he gave a wicked grin.

He lowered his mouth back to her breasts as his fingers explored her. He found her clit and stroked experimentally, firm, light; fast, slow. After a moment he made a noise of frustration and shifted hands, bracing himself on the left and stroking her with his right. The feel of his warm, coarse fingers against her made her moan. A smile ghosted over his face at that. She felt him stroke lower, circling her entrance, before slipping one, then two fingers inside.

She arched, hips coming off the bed at the sensation. His eyes darkened in an entirely different way and he kissed her roughly, fingers moving inside her, stretching her gently. His thumb found her clit again and he rubbed it in tandem with his fingers. Trusting that he had the Soldier under control, Amanda let herself go. She gasped and moaned, clutching at his shoulders, his arms, rocking with his rhythm as he drove her higher, heat pooling inside.

Just when she thought she couldn’t take it any longer, couldn’t handle any more sensation, he dipped his head and took her nipple in his mouth, teeth scraping against the sensitive peak. That little spark of almost-pain tipped her over the edge. She said his name on a broken cry, fingers digging into the flesh of his shoulder as she rode it out. His arm slipped underneath her, holding her tightly as she shuddered.

He rested his head on the pillow by her head, breathing hard. When she could move again she slid her arm around his back, hugging him silently a moment before turning her head and kissing him. He sank into the kiss with a groan and she could taste how very little control he had left.

She ran her hands down his back and into the waist band of his pants, pushing them down, past his hip, until his erection sprang free. She felt him go still until she wrapped one long leg around his, drawing his cock to her entrance. “Please,” she whispered into his mouth. “Please, please.” She repeated the word until he sank into her, driving forward in one smooth stroke, filling her up. She gasped at the feel of him, head tipping back. He kissed her throat, teeth scraping against her pulse point as he started to move, thrusting into her.

So good. It felt so good. He took a few moments to learn her body, watch her reactions, then he let go, hips pumping as his rhythm grew harder, faster. He tangled his metal hand into her hair, fisting it so she felt that tug on her scalp. He held her still and kissed her, tongue invading her mouth in the same rhythm as their bodies. 

It was fast, and almost rough. She clung to him, fingers digging into his shoulders, flesh on one side, hard metal on the other. He broke the kiss and ran his mouth along her jaw, then her throat. He bit lightly and she bucked into him. Heat gathered, low and tight in her belly and she whimpered, neat her limit. He slid a hand beneath her hips, skin hot against hers, holding her up to him. The angle was perfect and after a few more strokes she shattered, body spasming tight around him as she came.

He gave a noise that was almost a growl, sinking completely into her before shuddering his own release. She felt the heat of it spread through her and sighed, pressing her face into his hair, holding him to her as he let his arms relax and slumped onto her completely.

Her legs were stiff, her fingers ached where they’d dug into the metal of his arm and he was heavy as hell. But Amanda didn’t think she had ever felt quite as safe as she did in that moment.

*

It was dark out when Bucky woke, wrapped tight against Amanda’s back, arms around her waist. It had been a long, pleasantly exhausting day. They hadn’t left the apartment. Hadn’t left the bedroom much, save to go to the kitchen for a snack. Which had, inevitably, ended with Amanda bent over the table and him thanking his lucky stars he’d been snobby about furniture craftsmanship.

Now she was warm and supple in his arms, breath slow and even. It had been fun exploring her. Finding how far down her shoulders freckles spilled. Discovering the tattoo of part of the Hippocratic Oath and a serpent wrapped around a staff on her hip, which he had called a caduceus. Which had led to her explaining that it was really a Rod of Asciepuis and what that had to do with the Oath. Which had led to him discovering he found her guest lecturer voice extremely sexy.

Frankly, he found just about everything about her sexy at this point. It had been that kind of day.

He’d been happy a lot of times since he’d come to the Tower with Steve. More in the recent weeks, since his epiphany after the shooting. Usually with Steve or Amanda, but more and more with the team in general or even on his own. He was happy often enough it no longer surprised him. Was no longer worth special note. Tonight, right now, was the first time he felt content. The burden of his past put aside, concerns of the future far off. In this particular moment, with this woman in his arms, he was utterly content.

She stirred a little and he felt his body respond. He nuzzled the back of her shoulder, hand flattening on her stomach. She caught it before he could slide it lower. “If you’re going to continue trying to make up for the last seventy years in one day I’m going to need some Advil and an energy drink,” she muttered.

He kissed her shoulder and tugged her back into his chest. “Sore?”

“A little.” She pressed into him a moment before rolling to face him. She kissed him tenderly a moment before giving him an indulgent look. “This has to be the serum, no normal man could get it up again after that many rounds.”

He was sure his grin was unbearably smug. “Not bad for a guy in his nineties, huh?”

“Physiologically, you’re only about thirty or so.” She combed her fingers through his hair, stroking it off his face. “Which makes you younger than me.”

“So we’re both, simultaneously, robbing the cradle?”

Amanda laughed softly. “Something like that, yeah.”

The laugh and almost shy smile she gave afterwards hit him like a punch to the gut. She’d taken her glasses off somewhere after the second or third time. She said up this close she could see clear enough to know if she was with the right person. He saw her without them on and off, sharing a bed with her. Today had been the longest single stretch since the woods of Romania. She looked like a different person without them. Softer, younger. It brought out all those instinctive, protective urges that had once been the basis of his friendship with Steve. They still came out, now and then, on missions, despite the fact the other man now had three inches on him. Other than the ill-fated Romania mission he hadn’t associated them much with Amanda. She seemed to type to buck against any sort of protecting.

After today he didn’t think she had much choice. She was his girl, the only one he could remember having. And he was going to protect her with everything he had. Whether she liked it or not.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said softly.

Her cheeks pinked and she tapped his nose. “Remind me to sign you up for an eye test with Tiffani.”

He frowned and touched her scar. He felt her stiffen a little. “You think this bothers me?”

“James-”

“It’s just like my arm,” he persisted. “It means you’re strong.”

She blinked at him, eyes suddenly bright. He saw her swallow hard, then she leaned close to kiss him, tucking her arms around him. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

“I mean it,” he told her, rubbing her back.

“I know. That’s why I’m thanking you.” She shifted down the bed a bit so she could fit herself under his chin, cheek pressed to his chest. He settled his chin on her head and sighed, that feeling of contentment washing over him again. He could stay like this for the rest of his life, he decided.


	15. Chapter 15

He woke to the sound of his alarm going off. He didn’t remember setting it, but he reached across Amanda to slam his left hand into it, crushing it into oblivion. This left him half draped across her, which seemed like a good place to stay.

Her fingers wound through his hair. “That poor thing was just doing its job,” she murmured.

“It should know to take the morning off when I’m tired. I don’t even have to be up yet.”

“I do.” She kissed the top of his head and tried to nudge him off. “Lemme up.”

He nuzzled his face into her shoulder, wrapping an arm around her. “I’m not done with you yet.”

A chuckle shook her chest. “I will be far more excited about that after a day of staring at lab reports.” She nudged him again, a little more forcefully, and this time he let her sit up.

She stretched both arms over her head and he watched her shamelessly. “I’ll see you at lunch?” she asked as she stood. “Or do you need the whole day to recover?”

“Will lunch involve anything more than food?”

Amanda grinned and bent to kiss him. “Dirty old man,” she murmured again his mouth before stepping away and heading for the shower.

He had to put up with a couple days of cat calls and teasing from the team. Fortunately, he was in too good of a mood to mind very much. Regular sex made up for a lot of of daytime annoyances. He did make it abundantly clear that if any of said teasing made its way to Amanda he would be a very unhappy super-strong assassin and the others behaved accordingly. From what she said she was getting her own gentle ribbing from her team. She didn’t need Stark being a thirteen year old girl on top of it.

Not much changed between them. They moved clothes and toiletries into each other’s apartments. They each acquired second nightstands for the other to use. The one in his apartment sported a spare pair of glasses, an assortment of hair clips and ties and a small stack of books. She appeared to always be reading multiple books, both on a tablet and analog. He didn’t know how she kept multiple plots and sets of characters straight, but when he tried to test her she could rattle off the basic information of every one he picked up. He gave up trying to trick her then and just started stealing them when she was done.

His bathroom suddenly had a small corner of fancy looking bottles that proclaimed to have Brazilian keratin, tee tree oil, and ylang ylang in them. There was also of tube of lotion that smelled like tropical flowers. That was his favorite.

And so it went pretty smoothly for a couple of months. He was happy. Amanda seemed happy. He was fairly certain if she _wasn’t_ he would hear about it. He knew she still worried when he went on missions, but he imagined that was never going to go away. She’d lost too much to not worry she might lose more.

November came to New York with a blast of cold and early snow. Amanda’s complaints about his hand being cold increased, but having the rest of him to warm her up seemed to make up for it. He was fairly certain she stuck her feet in ice water before coming to bed.

He came out of a post-mission debrief to find Amanda waiting for him, leaning on the wall a few yards down the hallway.  
 Bucky tapped Steve’s arm. “I’ll catch you later.”

Steve’s gaze followed his, spotting Amanda and her grinned. “Sure you will.” He gave him a little salute and headed on as Bucky stopped at her side.

She tipped her chin up to meet his kiss and for a moment he let himself get lost in her. He was pretty sure he was never going to get tired of kissing and holding her. At the least, he was determined to never take it for granted. 

When he lifted his head he didn’t go far, resting his forehead on hers. “Were you waiting for me?”

“I was,” she murmured, looking at his mouth and not his eyes. “I had a question to ask and was apparently anxious enough about it I was annoying Tiffani.”

He leaned back a little so he could see more of her face. “Is it a bad question?”

She sighed a little, bit her lip, then apparently decided to just spit it out. “Would you like to meet my family?”

It took effort, but he managed to hide most of his complete and utter shock. Other than that one night when he’d looked at her pictures and she’d told him about her mother she hadn’t really spoken about her family. As far as he knew, they still had no idea she worked for Stark and treated the Avengers. “I - really?”

Apparently, his reaction was the right one, because she gave a little half smile. “Yeah. Well, not Becca, she’s doing some Iron Man competition out West. Endurance run, not Stark-related. But Dad and Jessie will be in DC for Veterans Day and I was going to head down. Dad visits the ‘Nam memorial every few years and we try to go with him so he’s not alone. I thought it would be a good opportunity for you to meet them. But if you want to go I need to know so I can warn them.”

“Does this mean you’re coming out about working with the Avengers?”

She sighed. “Yes, so I hope you realize how much I like you.”

He grinned. “I like you, too.” He slung an arm around her neck and tugged her into him. “Thank you. I would like to meet them, if you’re sure you’re okay with it.”

“I’m rarely sure of anything in my family.” She tipped her head back to look at him. “I am sure of you, however. And that’s enough to get me to merge my two worlds.”

“I’m flattered,” he told her, kissing her temple as they started towards the elevator. “I wish I could return the favor, but Steve’s all the family I have left and you already know him.”

“If it helps, he does sort of intimidate me.”

He looked down at her. “I refuse to believe anyone intimidates you. Especially not Steve.”

“He’s Captain America!” she protested, as if that explained everything.

Bucky hit to button for the elevator and turned to face her, leaning against the wall. “Most people would probably find me far more intimidating than him.”

She slid her arms around his waist and leaned on him. “You’re not intimidating, you’re just sexy.”

“I’m sexily intimidating?” he asked, fighting a smile. She nodded solemnly and he lost the fight, leaning in to kiss her again. “Only to you, darlin’.”

*

Winter had not made it to DC, despite it being the second week in November and positively frigid in New York. Coming down on the train had been like watching the seasons go in reverse, first snow, then scattered patches of white. Southern Pennsylvania seemed to be clinging the last vestiges of fall. Once they’d gotten to Union Station in Washington it had been like going back to summer and Amanda had wished they were staying for more than a day. 

Currently, they were standing at the front of the Vietnam memorial, where the wall was only knee height, waiting for her father and sister to show up. She squinted out at the grass, wondering if it was worth taking off her sweater when she’d just have to carry it around the rest of the day. Well, James would probably offer to carry it once he saw her fidgeting with it. And it might be nice to have the sun on her shoulders.

Or, maybe she was just trying to distract herself from the impending meeting. She glanced at James to find him scanning the crowd like he was picking out his next target. So he was nervous too, good to know.

He’d apparently looked out the hotel window before they’d left and had shed the leather jacket he’d worn down from New York. He was still in a long sleeved grey shirt over a black t-shirt, but she imagined she wouldn’t be getting that off with a crowbar. He didn’t like flashing the arm around in public. Most of the time he seemed fine with it; he certainly didn’t shy away from her touching it. It was just in crowds he seemed to want to avoid revealing it. People did tend to stare.

A breeze had picked up, causing her to begin the sweater debate anew when she spotted her father strolling down the lawn towards them. She lifted a hand to wave and saw him smile. He was limping more than usual and Amanda made a mental note to nag him about a doctor’s visit.

Thomas Newbury had survived high school football, boot camp, a tour in Vietnam, and a year of severe alcoholism without a scratch. Then, in his forties, he had fallen while shagging fly balls for Becca’s softball team and had torn the cartilage in his right knee. Regular cortisone shots and mild PT had gotten him this far but Amanda suspected it was time for surgery and that was not a discussion she was looking forward to having with him. She got her stoic stubbornness straight from him.

That would keep for another day, though. Right now, Amanda stepped forward and hugged him, letting him lift her off the ground a little bit. “Hi, Daddy.”

“Hello, peanut,” he muttered, squeezing her a little tighter than usual. “It’s very good to see you.”

She leaned back and accepted his kiss on her cheek. “How was the drive?”

“Long as ever. You’d think they’d install some new scenery for me once in a while.”

“ _I_ think you should move farther north where two of your three daughters live and take the train on your annual pilgrimage.”

He scoffed and let her go, lifting a hand to ruffle her hair. She gave him a warning glare and he settled for tugging her pony tail. “I’m not ready to be a Yankee just yet.” He then turned to face James and gave her an expectant look.

And that was apparently all the friendly banter they were getting. “Dad, this is my boyfriend-” She stumbled on the word a bit. They probably should have discussed taxonomy earlier but, well, there it was. “Sergeant James Barnes. James, this is my dad, Thomas Newbury.”

James stuck out his hand and shook her father’s. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

“You, too.” Her dad studied him a moment. “She tried to explain it all but I’m still a little hazy on the details. You’re _the_ Sergeant Barnes?”

“Yes, sir. But, to be honest, I’m a bit fuzzy on the details as well.”

Dad laughed a little. “You don’t have to call me sir. Tom will do just fine. Hell, I should probably be calling you sir. You outrank me.”

She watched James’s shoulder relax a little. “James is fine. You can even call me Bucky, if you want.”

“Oh, I think I’ll have to work up to that one.”

Okay, that had all gone better than expected. One family member down, one to go. “Where’s Jess?”

“She texted me.” Her dad rummaged in his pocket and pulled out his phone. “‘Cabbie says five more minutes.’ That was almost ten minutes ago.”

“She took a cab?” James’ brow furrowed. “The metro’s less than a mile.”

Amanda couldn’t help a little unladylike snort at that.“Yeah, Jess doesn’t really do walking.”

“‘Manda,” her dad said in a very familiar exasperated tone.

“Well she _doesn’t_.” She looked back at James. “You’ll see when she gets here. Jess got all the girly in the family.”

He slid an arm around her waist. “You’re plenty girly for me.” A look of panic crossed his face and he glanced back at her dad, who was pointedly looking away.

Amanda dropped a kiss on his shoulder. “Thank you, honey.”

“Is that my big sister showing physical affection to someone?!”

She felt James stiffen at her side and sighed, turning to see her little sister walking down the path to join them. Predictably, she was in an expensive looking sundress and a pair of deadly heels. When Jess picked out shoes she probably didn’t think of their use as shivs or ice picks, but their minds had always worked differently.

The only thing she hadn’t expected was Jess’s long, dark hair to be gone; chopped into a cute pixie style.

“You cut your hair!” Amanda exclaimed as Jess reached her and wrapped her arms around her.

“God, you really don’t want me on TV, do you?” she muttered, squeezing her surprisingly tight.

“I work for a living. And I get my news from the Daily Show.”

“That’s actually true,” James commented.

Jess grinned and let Amanda go to look at him with obvious interest. “So you’re the boyfriend.”

Good Lord _why_ had this seemed like a good idea? “Jess, James Barnes. James, my sister Jess Newbury.”

James stuck his hand out at the same time time Jess spread her arms. “Can we hug?” she asked. “I’m a hugger.” 

He glanced at Amanda and she just sort of shrugged and waved her hands as if say ‘Oh, go ahead.’ The hug was kind of awkward, but Jess looked pleased with herself.

When she’d moved to hug their father James leaned to murmur in her ear. “You’re sure you’re related?”

“I told you. She got most of the genes that skipped me.” She couldn’t help tucking a possessive arm through his when Jess and their father finished their hug. James’s little smirk indicated he knew exactly what she was doing. “Can we start walking now?”

“Yes,” he father said, an odd little smile on his face. “Let’s.”

They started to stroll along the wall, dodging other groups of tourists. Her dad didn’t take much notice, he hadn’t joined the fight till later and didn’t know many names on this end of the monument. James was scanning them, a frown tugging his mouth.

“These are all casualties?” he asked finally. She was pretty sure he knew already, but was still wrapping his mind around it. 

“By year, yes,” she told him. “That’s why it gets bigger as it goes on. More deaths as the war went on.”

He peered down the length of the wall, squinting. “Is there one for my war?” he asked.

They’d stopped walking and her dad and sister looked back. “Yeah,” her dad said. “But there’s no names. Not like this.”

“There’s stars. But they each represent ten people,” Amanda added.

“There’s names at Pearl Harbor,” Jess piped up. “Plus it comes with a trip to Hawaii.”

He looked over at her. “Can we go see it? The one here. Before we leave?”

She gave his arm a squeeze. “Of course we can.” Hell, they could go see the Pearl Harbor one, too, someday. Wasn’t like they lacked for air travel opportunities in their job.

When they started walking again he let go of her arm and she let him wander at his own pace. He ended up side by side with her dad when they reached the names her dad knew and she watched as Dad started pointing them out to him. She heard the rumble of James’s response but not the words.

Jess caught her arm. “My feet are dying, let’s sit.” She dragged Amanda over to the lawn and plopped unceremoniously onto the grass. Amanda sank down next to her. They watched the men move away; they probably hadn’t even noticed they’d left them.

She pointedly didn’t look at Jess when she asked, “How long have you been sick?”

Her sister smiled wryly. “How did you know?”

“You’ve lost a little weight, you’d never cut your hair without a gun to your head and either you’ve taken up a heroin habit-” She caught Jess’ arm and turned it palm up to reveal the cluster of old and new bruises in the crick of her elbow. “Or you have a nurse who needs a refresher on her IV procedure.”

Jess shook her head. “I should have known. I was diagnosed six weeks ago, to answer your question.”

“And you’re just telling me _now_?” Jess shrugged and Amanda had to breathe a moment to control her temper. “Diagnosis and prognosis?”

“Stage two pineal astrocytic tumor. Chemo started last week. Surgery is still an option, but I’m responding well. The doctors are very optimistic. At least to my face.”

For a minute Amanda thought she was going to throw up. Brain cancer. Her baby sister had brain cancer. She stared sightlessly at the black wall of names in front of her. When she trusted herself to speak again she asked, “Who’s your primary?”

“Why? Are you going to go beat him up if I don’t get better?”

“New York medical community is smaller than you think. I might know him.”

Jess sighed. “Treval. Anton Treval.”

Amanda scanned her memory but the name didn’t ring a bell. She didn’t do much with the cancer community. It was likely her work could someday apply to oncology, but that was years away. “Does Dad know?”

“I was hoping to wait until I had a better grasp of how chemo was going. Maybe even after the holidays. But it doesn’t look like it’s an option now. I’ll probably tell him today.” She picked a blade of grass and twirled it between thumb and forefinger. “Becca doesn’t know, either.”

“Has Trevor been supportive?” Jess had been dating some “urban clothing designer” for about eighteen months. Amanda hadn’t entirely decided what she thought of him yet. He was very. . . not her type.

Jess grinned and looked at her fully for the first time since they’d sat. “He shaved his head.”

Had she been drinking something, Amanda would have spit it out. “He _what_?”

Her sister was beaming. “After the first chemo treatment I was so sick and depressed. Crying about my hair and Mom and just. . . everything. I could tell he didn’t know what to say and hugging hurt and he just looked so helpless. After a while he walked into the bathroom and I thought he just needed to calm down. He came back twenty minutes later completely shaved. He told me there wasn’t anything he could do to take my pain away, but he could make sure I knew I wasn’t alone.” Jess’s smile turned a little watery. “I love him so much.”

Amanda felt a bit of the ache that had been growing in her chest ease a bit. “Well,” she said and was startled to realize her voice was tight. “I guess I better start liking him now.”

“Damn right.” Jess looked over to where Dad and James had walked. “I’m younger than Mom.”

Their mother had been thirty one when she was diagnosed. Amanda had felt an instinctive, completely irrational, sense of triumph on her thirty second birthday. “Treatment was different then,” she said, watching the men because it was easier than looking at her sister. “By the time they found hers there was no hope. Sounds like you have options.”

“Yeah,” Jess said softly. She leaned into Amanda’s side and Amanda wrapped her arm around her, holding her to her. They sat in silence a while before Jess gestured to the men, “What do you think they’re talking about?”

“Dad’s probably telling old war stories. How long has it been since he had a new audience?”

Jess nodded. “Or he’s threatening a nonagenarian assassin with super strength not to break the heart of his favorite daughter.”

She wasn’t touching the favorite daughter thing. That was an old, old family semi-joke. “Is that a real word?”

“Yes, because when you work for the media and have to cover the antics of the Avengers you find yourself knowing the word for ‘person in their nineties.’” She shifted to look at her. “I can’t _believe_ you didn’t tell me you worked for the Avengers.”

“You know exactly why I didn’t tell you.” This conversation, at least, she was prepared for. “I am not going to be your inside source for all things superhero.”

“Just a little head’s up when something interesting is going on.”

“Jessie, honeybun, if I _ever_ call to tell you something interesting is happening it will be so that you can fucking evacuate the city.”

Her sister actually laughed at that. “Duly noted.” She hunted a moment before finding a dandelion in the grass. She started plucking little yellow petals out. “Do you love him?”

Amanda had never told a man she loved him. She hadn’t dated until college and by then she was focused on her classes and getting into med school. Boys were for sex and occasionally dragging her to a party. She’d had an ‘arrangement’ with a guy on and off in med school; more of a stress reliever than a relationship. She hadn’t had time for anything but casual since then. Jess and Becca told her she had organized her life to be alone. Usual the mere mention of love and commitment was enough to send her running.

This time, however, the usual spike of panic didn’t come. It should have surprised her, but didn’t. Her relationship with James wasn’t like any she’d ever had. There was comfort there. Safety. Not things she was used to having.

She looked past Jess to where James and Dad were walking back to them. Two old warriors finding common ground. Without meaning to, she started to smile.

Jess waved a hand. “Never mind. The goofy grin says it all.”

Well, that she couldn’t deny. “I don’t know if I love him,” she admitted. “But I want the chance to learn.”

“That’s not what what grin says. That grin says you got it bad.”

Amanda gave her a sidelong glance. “I do love to watch that man walk.”

“That’s not walking, big sis, that’s strutting. Maybe prowling.”

Before she could respond James and Dad reached them. “You two lasted longer than last time,” Dad said. “You’re lucky James is such good company.”

“You got him to first name basis,” Amanda said, reaching up so James could pull her to her feet.

“And in a fraction of the time it took Steve to get you to do it,” he replied, tucking a loose lock behind her ear.

“You’re on a first name basis with Captain America?!” her sister squeaked behind her.

“Look what you did.” James just grinned, putting an arm around her as they walked towards the street.

“Come on, Mands. You gotta give me something. What’s Iron Man’s blood pressure?”

“One twenty over none of your business.”

“You suck, big sis.”

Amanda sighed extravagantly. “It’s a burden I bear.” They hit the sidewalk and stopped. “We’ll meet you at the restaurant for dinner. I want to hit the hotel and change.”

Dad leaned over to kiss her cheek. “See you there.”

Jess tucked her arms through this. “C’mon Dad, I’ll show you how we flag down cabs in New York.”

“I think it went well,” James said as they watched Dad and Jess walk away. He glanced over at her. “What were you and your sister talking about? You looked serious.”

Without a word, she turned and wrapped her arms around his body, pressing her face into his shoulder. His arms went around her immediately, holding her to him. “‘Manda? What is it?”

She shook her head and just tightened her arms. She wasn’t crying. She didn’t cry. In a minute she’d pull herself together and tell him about her sister. But right now, she really needed a hug.


	16. Chapter 16

Dinner had been a rather subdued affair. Amanda and her sister did their best to keep conversation light and constant. They’d managed to avoid any major awkward silences. But it was obvious their father was still digesting the news of his younger daughter’s illness, plus the emotions visiting the wall had brought up.

Bucky was no expert, but he was pretty sure most ‘meeting the family’ events didn’t include war memorials and the looming specter of mortality. He probably shouldn’t be _surprised_ that nothing in his life went the normal way, but just once would have been nice.

Now back at the hotel, he sat in bed listening to Amanda shower and get ready for bed. Normally he would have tried to join her in said shower, but she’d seemed like she needed a little alone time. Other than the hug and a little extra hand holding she hadn’t seemed to react much to her sister’s news. When she’d told him about it she’d used her doctor voice. As if she was reciting details of some case she’d read about in a medical journal. He was probably going to need to push her a bit. Remind her that he, at least, did not require her to be the strong one all the time.

He listened to the shower turn off and counted to one hundred to get her time to dry off a bit before calling out, “‘Manda?” He wasn’t entirely sure when he started dropping the first ‘a’ off her name. It made it easier to say for some reason and she either didn’t notice or mind. He’d heard her father and sister do the same thing today and figured it must be a common nickname.

The door opened and she poked her head out, hair wrapped up in a towel. “Yeah?”

He intended to bring up her sister, to poke her a bit. But instead what came out was, “Am I going to out live you?”

She blinked rapidly a moment, then held up a finger. “One sec.” She ducked back into the bathroom and he thumped his head on the wall behind the bed.

Of all the things to say. It had been a nagging little doubt in the back of his mind for weeks. There was no reason to bring it up now, of all times. It must have been talking to her father and the gloom at dinner.

He was still mentally castigating himself when Amanda came out of the bathroom, in the star pajamas he’d given her, still drying her hair with a towel. “Okay. What?”

Well, it was out now and she sure as hell wan’t going to let it drop easily. He cleared his throat. “You said, once, that I was actually younger than you. Physically. And I know the serum messes with how I age. I was just wondering. . .”

She blew out a breath and looked away from him a moment. Then she came around to sit on the edge of the bed, next to his legs. “I’m thirty-seven,” she said, voice somewhere between normal and guest lecturer. “Barring major accident or illness I have - ballpark - about fifty years left. Give or take.” She fluffed her hair one more time before tossing the towel in the general direction of the bathroom. “You’re in your early thirties. Without a complete history I don’t really know how much you aged while being taken in and out of cryo but it’s around five years. Without the serum - again, barring major injury or illness - you’d probably also have another fifty years or so.” She sighed and reached out, sliding her hand into his without looking. “I don’t know enough about what they did to you to know how much your aging is affected. I’ll know more in a few years, once I have a series of physicals to compare. But based on Steve and your rate of healing I’d say you probably have about seventy to eighty years left.”

Now she looked over at him and there was sadness sunk in her eyes and etched in the lines of her face. He suspected it wasn’t just for him, or them, but for her sister and her mother and all the men on the wall. Everyone who died too young or too suddenly. All the people no one could save. “So, yes,” she said softly. “You will almost certainly outlive me.”

He reeled her in by the hand, until she was tucked against his chest and he could put his arms around her. It was more for him than her, though she certainly seemed to need it. Intellectually, he knew it was probably stupid to be worrying about something fifty years in the future. Especially considering his job was about as dangerous as you could get and she was just as likely to be standing over his grave as he was hers. 

“I didn’t know we were at the ‘worrying about each others deaths of old age’ stage of our relationship,” she said, sliding her arms around him. She shifted so she was stretched out along his side.

He rested his chin on the top of her head. “I don’t like the idea of being without you,” he admitted.

“I’m sorry today was such a downer.” He felt as much as heard her sigh. “Dad and Jess did like you, if that matters.”

“Only if it matters to you.”

Her arms tightened on him. “ _You_ matter to me.”

“Well I _know_ you like me.”

She laughed softly into his shoulder. “I think we’ll be just fine, then.”

They visited the WWII memorial the next morning. It didn’t effect him in the way he had expected. Not the way the Captain America display at the Smithsonian had. Stars on a wall were a powerful symbol but still oddly distant to him. He wasn’t up for a trip to the museum, so they caught an earlier train and headed back home to New York and the snow.

Stark held a huge dinner for Thanksgiving. It took both Bucky and Steve to convince Amanda to come along. Apparently, she didn’t feel she quite fit in with the superhero set. Romanov seemed to make it her mission to make her comfortable and she ended up in a corner with her, Dr. Foster, Dr. Foster’s assistant and Ms. Potts, drinking wine and laughing. They occasionally glanced over at the men and giggled again which couldn’t be a good sign. Still, if was good to see her smiling and the food was really good. 

A week later, Amanda went out to lunch with the Avenger wives club and Bucky let Steve drag him out Christmas shopping.

“They have a thing now,” he said. “It’s called the internet. You can purchase things on it. No interacting with people at all.”

Steve shook his head. “Interacting with people isn’t a negative, Bucky.”

“I suppose you’ve become adjusted to the stares.”

“No one is staring at you.” Steve slapped him on the back. “This is New York, Buck. You are not the strangest thing they’ve seen today.”

That was a good point, actually. It was possible a few people gave them second looks because together they were more recognizable than they were separately. But shield and metal arm aside, they were far from the flashiest Avengers. Thor got crowds following him if he stepped outside in his armor. (Including, surprisingly, a number of little girls in red tutus and crowns. Amanda had tried to explain the appeal of a real, honest-to-Odin prince to a six year old, but he still found it mystifying. Dr. Foster seemed to find it adorable.) Stark had his constant fan girls. Even Romanov and Barton seemed to have a contingent of “edgy” dark teens and young twenty-somethings who saw the appeal of assassins turned superheroes. Steve’s fans were usually old or middle-aged men who, like Coulson and Amanda’s father, had grown up on stories of the Howling Commandos.

Bucky didn’t know if he had any fans, other than off shoots of Steve’s. He tried to keep a low profile and while people seemed aware he was on the team now, no one was clamoring for interviews. Which was exactly how he liked it. Especially if it let him get through Christmas shopping without being hassled.

He trailed along after Steve as he bought things for everyone he’d ever met. Bucky didn’t expect anyone but Amanda and Steve to get him a present. At least, he hadn’t until he mentioned as much to Amanda and she’d rolled her eyes and told him she’d take care of presents for the team. Which still left him with only her and Steve to shop for.

It was starting to get dark and Bucky was dreaming of pizza and his couch when Steve paused on the sidewalk to check his list. Bucky eyed the window of the closest store and found himself staring at a necklace with a cluster of stars dangling from it. He pictured it on Amanda’s neck, stars tucked in the hollow of her collarbones. Maybe even at the top of her cleavage. “I need to buy that,” he said out loud, tapping the window.

Steve looked up. “The jewelry store?”

“Yep.” Not bothering to look back, he strode the few steps to the door and slipped inside.

 The girl behind the counter seemed a little frazzled but greatly appreciated the fact that he knew exactly what he wanted and didn’t even blink at the price. Which Steve arrived just in time to hear.

“That’s a lot of money,” he said as the girl walked off to box the necklace.

“This might surprise you, but I don’t actually buy a lot of things.” He’d purchased a new wardrobe, but that had been on Steve’s card. His rent was free. He and Amanda split most of the food he ate. He borrowed her books and movies. Stark had handed him a phone and computer. His paychecks went into an account that was rarely touched. Why couldn’t he spend a few thousand on a Christmas gift for his girl friend? He’d never miss it.

Steve was quiet until the salesgirl brought the jewelry back and pointed them at the long line for the register. Bucky sighed, took the box and went to the end of the line.

Finally, Steve broke the silence. “I’m trying to phrase my next question so I don’t sound like a teenager.”

“Yes, we are going steady,” Bucky replied, looking straight ahead. “Regrettably, I have no idea what happened to my letter jacket, so I can’t give it to her to wear.”

That got a chuckle. “So it’s serious?”

“I’m not entirely sure what that means. We are, basically, living together. We haven’t said I love you, yet, but neither of us is particularly warm and fuzzy. It’ll come eventually.” He shrugged. “I’m happy. She’s happy. It’s good enough for now.”

Steve nodded. “I don’t want to pry.”

Bucky smirked at him. “Yes, you do.”

“Well maybe not _pry_.” He shrugged. “You were very broken and distant when I found you. Romanov tried to prepare me for never seeing my old friend again. And I tried. But I see a lot more of the old you than I ever expected. And I’m glad.”

He still wasn’t entirely sure who the old Bucky was. But he liked who he was well enough. Some sort of equilibrium between the Soldier and that other man. He no longer felt like the odd man out or that the people around him were waiting for him to go rogue. The team accepted him more or less unconditionally. It was a good place to be in. It was far more than he’d ever expected to have. It was a life he could see himself living a long time.

But all he said to Steve was, “We could start the barbershop quartet back up.” His friend laughed and shook his head as the line crept forward. “Look, you don’t have to stick around. If you want to head back to the Tower I can catch up with you later.”

Steve squinted at the length of the line. “No. I’ll stick around. You want to know why?”

Bucky had a sinking feeling he did. “Don’t you dare.”

Steve clapped him on the shoulder. “Because I’m with you-”

“I swear to _God_ , Steve.”

“Till the front of the line.”

He groaned and covered his face with a hand. “I’m going to punch you so hard next time we spar.”

Christmas seemed to come with excruciating slowness after that. Bucky had never been much for secret keeping and present hiding. He ended up giving the necklace to Romanov to guard, just so he wouldn’t thrust it into Amanda’s hands over lunch one day. It helped that she was busy with the beginnings of her rat experiments and other work. She and her sister got together more often. On the 22nd she was tentatively declared in remission and Amanda brought home champagne and declared it the best early gift she could have received.

Finally, it was Christmas morning dawned. He woke before she did and was surprised to find a new coffeemaker in her kitchen with a bright red bow taped to it.

She was blinking blearily when he went back to the room. “When did you set that up?”

“You sleep deeper than you think,” she told him with a sleepy smile. “Merry Christmas, you can have your liquid caffeine.”

He put a knee on the bed and kissed her. “Thank you. Do you want your gift?”

“Mmm.” She tangled her hands in his hair a moment. “I suppose. But it’s comfortable here.”

“I can bring it here,” he told her, nuzzling the soft skin under her ear. “It’s small.”

Her sign indicated capitulation, so he was surprised when she nudged his shoulder. “No. Presents must happen under the tree. Let’s make our morning beverages of choice and do this properly.”

“I didn’t peg you as a traditionalist,” he said as she slid her glasses on and moseyed out to the main room.

“If you’re not religious tradition is all Christmas is about.” He’d already started his coffee brewing, so he lounged in the doorway, watching her set the kettle on and make her tea. “I like Christmas if I have someone to share it with.”

“Are you sorry you didn’t go see your family?” He’s insisted he didn’t mind going to the annual family-drama-fraught Newbury Christmas week but she’d declined, opting to stay in the Tower to celebrate with the team. They’d be meeting the others up in Stark’s penthouse in a couple hours for brunch and presents. The pile under the ridiculous tree Stark had set up (with all gold and red ornaments on it) had grown to staggering proportions and Bucky had seen at least a couple with his name on it. He hoped Amanda had been serious about buying gifts from him.

She stirred sugar into her tea. “No. I tend to fall into old habits when we all get together. Everyone’s mother. Family peace keeper. It will be good for them to deal with each other on their own.” She walked over to kiss him, leaning into his side. “I’m glad for some time with you and your friends.”

He tucked an arm around her, walking out to the little tree she had set up on her coffee table. “ _My_ friends? You were getting pretty chummy with the wives club at Thanksgiving.”

“Well,” she said, drawing out the word. “It is nice to have people to chat about superhero relationships with. How to get soot out of spandex and such.”

Bucky snorted on a laugh, nudging her onto the couch and handing her the box he’d retrieved from Romanov the night before. “The day you do my laundry I’m checking to make sure you’re not some sort of impostor.” He watched her untie the little white ribbon and work a fingernail under the tape. Of course, she was one of _those_ present openers. “I’m just hoping you get some good embarrassing stories about Stark.”

“Oh, that’s not hard, just get a couple mojitos in Pepper and-” She broke off, seeing the jewelry box. She glanced at his face, then lifted the lid. Her jaw dropped when she saw the little cluster of stars. “Oh, my God.”

“You like it?” Her reaction was pretty obviously positive, but when a man spent four figures on a gift he wanted that verbal confirmation of appreciation.

“I love it. James, it gorgeous.” Amanda lurched forward and hugged him, pressing her face into his shoulder a moment. Then she leaned back and kissed him. “Thank you.” She lifted it out of the little fold of tissue paper and held it out to him. “Can you help put it on?”

This was one of those old fashioned, black and white movie things she seemed to love. He took the chain from her and waited for her to turn before fastening it around her neck. He pressed a little kiss to her nape, right where the clasp sit before wrapping his arms around her and tugging her back into his lap. “I think you need to prepare yourself for a lot of star jewelry.”

“Mmm.” She settled back against him, resting her arms over his. “I’m glad you have an aesthetically appealing symbol. Poor Jane is stuck with hammers.”

He chuckled. “When Steve gets a girl it’ll be shields”

“Oh, you can work with that. Circles are pretty ubiquitous.”

Bucky kissed her hair and sipped his coffee, watching the lights blink on the tree. He watched her play with the necklace out the corner of his eyes, letting the stars pool in the hollow of her throat, then cascade down her chest. Watching them dance against her skin was going to entertain him all day.

When she had arranged the stars in every possible formation, she stirred. “The coffee maker was not your only present.”

“Two presents? You’ll spoil me, woman.”

She gave him a little glare over her shoulder as she got up and dug under the tree. She came back with a box slightly smaller than the one her necklace had come in. Once she’d set it in his hands she sat, watching him expectantly.

Feeling oddly nervous, he tore the paper off and opened the plain white box to reveal a gold pocket watch. He gave Amanda an uncertain look before taking it out of the box and turning it over. Something stirred in the back of his memory and he checked the bottom, finding a small dent in the cover, right where he’d known it would be. “This was my father’s,” he said suddenly, with absolute certainty.

Amanda grinned. “You remember it.”

“I . . . it’s vague. But I knew the dent would be there. He crouched to pick me up when I’d skinned my knee and it happened to fall out of his pocket. The chain was long enough it hit the sidewalk.” Bucky flipped the cover open and saw the second hand sweeping around the face. “How did you _find_ this?” he asked, looking up at her.

“It was at the Smithsonian,” she said softly. “When your mother died a few boxes of important family things went to a niece, who put them up in her attic without looking through them. When they opened the exhibit on Steve at the Smithsonian her daughter brought the boxes over and donated them. They used some of it for the display but most of it wasn’t considered historically relevant and was catalogued and put away. Then Steve and I went down and made a rather impassioned argument for giving it back to you.”

The weight of the watch felt weirdly familiar. It had been heavier when he was a little boy, had filled his whole palm. “And they just gave it to you?”

“I made a sizable donation to the museum,” she said with a wry smile.

“‘Manda-”

“Hush, it’s tax deductible. The boxes are up in Steve’s apartment. I thought you’d want to go through them at your own pace. But I was sure this had to be memorable for you.”

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah, it is.” He closed watch with a thumb and reached out to pull her into a tight hug. “Thank you,” he said into her hair.

“You’re welcome.” She rubbed his arm lightly. “I’m glad I’m part of your future. But I want to make sure you have links to your past, too.”

Bucky took a deep breath of her scent, then sighed it out. That was probably the best explanation for where he was right now. Building his future while discovering his past. It would be her that helped him figure it out.

He tightened his arms on her. “Thank you,” he repeated, for an entirely different reason.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit for Steve's "front of the line" joke goes to tumblr user torakodragon and his delightful comic using the same. Used with permission.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caution: actual plot.

They spent most of the week after Christmas holed up in Amanda’s apartment. (They tried a night in James’s but apparently, Steve had a key and just walked right in when he needed something. She was pretty sure he’d gotten an eyeful before she dove behind the couch. Neither of them were looking the other in the eye much since.) 

New Years, Stark threw another party and she managed to talk James into attending. She still thought he’d be fun to play mean girls with. Besides, she’d gone shopping for a new dress and was determined to show it off.

“The point is to get there before midnight, right?” James called through the bathroom door.  
 Amanda rolled her eyes and put one more pin in her hair. “I will be done in a minute.”

“You said that eighteen minutes ago.”

She looked at the door. “Are you timing me?”

“Yes.”

Resisting the temptation to throw her shoe at the door, she gave herself one more check in the mirror. The dress was blue with white polka dots, in a sweetheart-necked-swing-skirted 40s style that was popular lately. She had discovered to her relief it was remarkably flattering to her hips. Some big rollers in her hair to make it wavy, a pair of blue ankle strap heels and her new necklace and she looked like something you might paint on the side of a plane. She’d even gotten a new pair of glasses, cat’s eye. Tiffani had assured her she didn’t look like a stern school teacher.

Well, it was now or never. She touched up her lip stick and stepped out into the bedroom.

“Finally. I’ve never seen you take-” He broke off, eyes wide, staring at her. He left his mouth hanging open, as if he intended to start talking again but nothing would come. It went on long enough she was getting vaguely self conscious when he closed the distance between them in two long strides and kissed her, pressing her abruptly against the doorframe.  
 She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back, not caring that he was smudging her lipstick and messing up her hair. _Mission accomplished._

“I think we should skip the party and stay here,” he muttered against her mouth.

“C’mon, soldier, you don’t want to go show me off?” He’d moved back enough she could see his outfit, far simpler at a button down shirt and slacks. He looked nice, though, and she rather sympathized with his idea.

“I think I’d rather keep you in bed. Maybe against this wall.”

“James!” It was mock indignation, but it got him to step back and grin at her. She handed him a handkerchief to wipe his mouth and ducked back quickly to fix her make up.

“Ready?” she asked when she came back out.

He offered her his arm. “We’re coming back down here at 12:01.”

“Agreed.”

The party looked pretty much the same as last years. She got a bigger greeting this year, though. The wives club, as the men called them, all waved from their places in the room and she and James made their way to say hello to all of them. Stark pressed a White Russian into her hand and she had a moment of bafflement as to how he knew what drink she preferred.

“He does it to everyone,” Steve told her when she mentioned it. “No one really knows how.”

“It’s his super power,” Natasha added, sipping something clear with a lime in it. “Maybe we can just start getting Hydra drunk.”

The men eventually got distracted taste testing some extremely rare whiskey that Stark had given himself for Christmas and Amanda wandered off to say hello to her crew. They had staked themselves out a spot in the sunken sitting area with a lot of drinks and what looked like graph paper.

“I see the chart of hotness is back,” she said, perching on the back of the couch with her feet on the seat between Tiffani and Claire.

“We diversified this year,” Pooja told her solemnly.

“I made them add women,” Tiffani explained. “Kevin backed me up.”

“That’s very equal opportunity workplace sexual harassment of you.” Amanda sipped her drink. “Am I on it?”

“No one in our department is on it,” Tiffani said. “That way lies hurt feelings.”

“I see Maria Hill is very high there.”    
“Tiff has a crush,” Kevin told her in a conspiratorial whisper. Amanda had hired him on full time just after Thanksgiving, on the caveat he wasn’t allowed near the incubators without supervision. There had been hugging.

“The algorithm doesn’t lie!” her nurse protested.

Amanda felt the heat of another body against her back an instant before James said over her shoulder, “Why am I so damn low?”

All of her assistants turned to look at him a moment, eyes wide. Finally, Kevin offered, “You’re our boss’s boyfriend. We had to toe a line.”

“Being taken is an automatic three point deduction,” Claire added.

“How did the metal arm rank?” Amanda asked, sipping her drink as said arm wrapped around her from behind.

“We were divided on if it was a plus or minus so it stayed neutral.” Tiffani gave her a wide grin. “If you’d like to be the deciding vote. . .”

With the White Russian still at her lips, Amanda raised her brow and gave a thumbs up. There was some scribbling on note paper and Pooja whipped out a Texas Instruments calculator, then James was moved up three and a half squares.

“Happy now?” Amanda asked him over her shoulder. 

She felt him rest his chin on her shoulder. “I’m not sure how I feel about being below Steve.”

“Everyone is below Steve,” she pointed out.

“Captain Rogers is the closest we have to a perfect score,” Tiffani confirmed.

“The man has the shoulder-to-waist ratio of a Dorito,” Claire said, knocking back her reddish cocktail.

“And an ass that won’t quit,” added Pooja, causing James to groan and press his face into Amanda’s hair.

She reached back to pat his head with as much comfort as she could manage. “What I want to know is who Finch Wyatt?” She pointed to the name that appeared to be coming in a close second to Steve.

“Mechanic in the motor pool,” Pooja told her. “Biceps the size of my head. He carries tires around like I do a tray of petri dishes.” She looked back at the chart. “I don’t think he owns a shirt with sleeves.”

James released Amanda’s waist long enough to point at another name. “If arms are that important why is Barton so low?”

There was a moment of silence, then Pooja said, very seriously, “Taken is three points off. Taken by someone who can kill us with a plastic spork is _six_ points off.”

Amanda leaned into James, laughing. “Very prudent.”

The was just a touch of mischief in his voice when he pointed out, “I think she’d be more offended by you rating him so low.”

This was met with looks of panic and a flurry of recalculating. Amanda was laughing too hard to protest when James lifted her off the back of the couch and drew her away.

“Your lab techs are strange,” he said as they wandered over to the windows.

She shook her head, still smiling. “Because they write up hotness algorithms? They wouldn’t work for someone like me if that wasn’t what they did for fun.”

“Your trial starts soon, doesn’t it?” he asked, leaning a shoulder on the floor to ceiling windows of the penthouse.

Amanda stood facing the windows, staring out at the brightly lit city. “Tomorrow, actually. We inject our rats with the serum I’ve worked up and monitor results.” She looked over at him, sure excitement was evident on her face. “Point of no return.”

He leaned over to kiss her forehead. “It’ll be great. I have faith in you.”

Faith turned out not to be enough. The serum trial started out fine. None of the rats had a bad reaction to the serum and in twenty four hours they had all shown improvements in speed, agility, and strength. One was making his way through the maze at almost half the time as his control.

Then is all started to go downhill. On day five, Pooja found one of the subjects dead when she came in in the morning. Autopsy showed growths on its heart and lungs. Official cause of death was heart failure. It was discouraging, but not necessarily the end of the experiment. Rats died of all manner of things. Just because they’d bred for health didn’t mean that a weak link hadn’t slipped through the cracks.

Two days later, another went down. This one from kidney failure.

Almost two weeks from the start of the test Amanda was down to two rats from ten. James found her alone in the lab after the others had gone home, sitting and watching the last two subjects running around their cages.

He put a hand on her back and rubbed gently. “You can’t will them to live by staring.”

“I know,” she said softly. “I just. . . I did this to them. I feel like I owe it to them to witness it.”

“What happened to the last three? The other night you said you were only down by half.”

She sighed. “Patton went feral and attached his cage mates. Khan was dead when we found them and MacArthur was hurt so bad we had to euthanize, as well as Patton. They all had cancerous growths. It leaves us with Macedonia and Sun Tzu. If they survive the night we’ll sedate them and do x-rays. If they’re infected we’ll put them out of their misery.”

James slid his arms around her and she turned, leaning her head on his shoulder. He took the clip out of her bun and stroked down her hair and back. “It’s not your fault.”

“I don’t know why it’s happened,” she said, letting some of her own misery and frustration rise. “It doesn’t make any sense. The serum _worked_. They had all the markers you’d expect from a successful administration. Serum failures don’t live two weeks and die of cancer!” At least, not in any of the studies she’d read.

He squeezed her a little, grounding her and pulling her back from a growing hysteria. “What does happen?”

She forced herself to take a deep breath and focus on the question. “It’s either rejected outright, at the time of the injection, which usually meant immediate death for the patient. If they survived the first day they would usually rapidly display physical mutations and die of those, usually having lost all sense of humanity.” She heard him swallow hard and rubbed his back. “There’s a reason we don’t test on humans. Schmidt was the only documented case of a patient with mutations surviving. You and Steve are the only ones who were complete successes.” She leaned back enough to look at him. “I’ve never read about anything like this happening.”

James tucked her hair behind her ears, then cupped her chin gently with his hand. “You’ll figure it out. I know you will.”

With a weak smile, she asked, “More faith?”

“No. I just know you. You won’t give up until you’ve got an answer.”

It was amazing to have someone believe so deeply in her. She’d managed just fine without him, but, God, it was so much easier to handle setbacks with someone strong and sturdy to lean on. She rested her forehead on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

More back rubbing. “You don’t have to figure it out now, though. Come out with me tonight.”

“I’m really not up for going out. Not even to watch you and Barton glare at each other over a pool table.”

“What about kicking each other’s asses at darts?”

She laughed and looked up at him. “Tempting. But I think I’ll stay here.”

He frowned, gaze darting to the rat cages, then back to her face. “Promise you won’t sit here the whole time staring at them?”

Then there were the times he knew her far too well. “I promise,” she conceded. “But I may dig up some of the old Hydra files and do more research.”

“I guess that’s a compromise of sorts.” He kissed her gently, stroking her cheek with a thumb. “I’ll see you later. But don’t feel the need to wait up.”

“All right. Have fun. Don’t bet too extravagantly.”

“Yes, dear,” he said with just the right amount of sarcasm. He pecked her cheek and headed out of the lab to go meet the others. Amanda watched him walk until he’d left the lab. Sometimes it was about the little indulgences.

Despite her promise, she stayed in the lab another hour or so, watching the rats run around. Sun Tzu was limping just a little when he went up the ramp. Amanda had no doubt both rats would prove to be cancerous and need to be put down. And that would be one hundred percent failure rate. And put her squarely back to the starting line. Farther, actually, as she had no idea how to fix what had gone wrong.

Rather than sink into depression at the idea of starting over, she shoved herself away from the table and stalked out of the lab. The rats would be there in the morning when she had assistants and interns to help her with what needed to be done. For now she needed to eat something, make a whole pot of tea and dive into a box or two of Nazi science files.

After treating herself to eggs and waffles for dinner at the diner, she dug through the Hydra files in her storage closet. It took two trips with a dolly to drag the boxes she wanted to her apartment, but soon she was sitting with a cup of Earl Grey, sorting through the paperwork and using a translation app to get through the various languages they were written in.

It was as boring as it was useful. Some of their work had been innovative, certainly for the time it was in. Amanda set some of the files aside to share with Hill. If Hydra had gotten anywhere with some of this work than there were very dangerous things out there. Unfortunately, there was very little about their experiments in the soldier serum, even in the files dated closer to the war.

She was about to call it a night, maybe curl up with a favorite movie and her knitting, when she opened a file and came face to face with James.

“Oh, shit,” she said, actually jumping a little in surprise. It was a picture she’d seen before, him in his cryo chamber, probably from the fifties. It was just a shock to see it now, when she actually knew him.

Romanov had gotten a great deal of information about James and the Winter Soldier project after the fall of the Triskelion. She had connections everywhere, but especially in what passed for the KGB in Russia now. It had been mostly about the Soldier’s missions and where he was kept between them. Amanda had gone over them a long time ago, when James had first come to the Tower, but she hadn’t found much connecting to her work.

This file was different. For one thing, there were far more pictures. Some she’d seen, but most were new. They had apparently documented the attachment of his arm. Surgery pictures didn’t bother her normally, but she struggled with these. That was _her_ James on the table, his chest and shoulder cut open. She shoved down on the rage and kept looking, trying to detach.  
 At the back of the file was a group shot of the doctors and technicians that had worked on building the Soldier. She stared at it a moment, then flipped it to read the back. It was dated March of 1946.

She turned it over slowly and studied the faces of the men. They ranged in age from late twenties to perhaps early fifties. All of them would likely be dead by now.

Except she recognized the young man standing in the front row, second from the left. She’d met him at a conference in Munich years ago. He didn’t look thirty something anymore, but he certainly didn’t look over one hundred either.

“Oh, shit,” she repeated in a whisper.


	18. Chapter 18

Bucky slipped into Amanda’s apartment as quietly as possible. He probably should have gone upstairs to his place, it was almost two am and he didn’t want to wake her up. She’d had a very rough week and any sleep she managed to get was hard won. But it was for that reason he’d decided to risk it. If she was still awake and obsessing over her rats he was the only one who’d be able to coax her into getting some rest.

So he was rather dismayed to find her in the living room, lights on, files and paperwork spread over the coffee table. He sighed. “Darlin’, I thought we talked about _not_ sitting up all night obsessing.” She looked up at him and he stopped in mid-chiding. He could read her pretty well by now, but he’d never seen her look like this. Like the world was ending. “‘Manda?”

She touched the couch next to her. “Come sit.”

He obeyed, because what else could he do with her looking at him that way? “Is it your sister? Did something happen?”

To his relief, she smiled a little and touched his arm. “No. She’s fine. Everyone is fine. I just-” She blew out a breath and looked over at the papers strewn on the coffee table. “I did some research tonight. In the old Hydra files we got from the compound in Romania. I found a file about you.”

An odd mix of emotions swirled through him. Anger, dread, fear. All tied together with a sick sense of shame. Intellectually, he knew she probably had a good idea of what had been done to him, but he still wanted to believe she didn’t. That she never saw him at the experiment he had been. “‘Manda, I don’t need to know-”

She held up a hand. “Just listen. Please.” He closed his mouth, pressing his lips into a thin, grim line and gave her a sharp nod. She reached out and picked up an old photo from the table. “This picture was in the file.” She held it out to him. “Do you recognize any of them?”

He studied the faces of the men. He did, on occasion, get flashes of memory from his time as the Soldier. Snapshots of violence or pain. Most were from missions, though, not the facilities he was held or wiped at. As expected, none of the scientists in the picture looked familiar. “No. Not really.”

Amanda reached over and pointed at a man in the front row. “This one. His name is Hans Hesse. He’s a virologist. I met him six years ago at a conference in Munich. He looked maybe thirty years older than he does in this picture. Not sixty.”

He realized he was suddenly breathing too fast and tried to calm down. “You’re saying he’s alive? One of the men who first operated on me is alive?”

She nodded slowly, watching him. “Yes.”

“How can- how can that be? He should be in a nursing home, like Peggy. He should be a hundred.”

“I think he used some of the serum for himself,” Amanda said, voice quiet and calm, a counterpoint to his rising panic. “He has a limp, it’s likely he had an accident of some sort and used the serum to survive it. It slowed his aging.”

Bucky stared at the man’s face, young and unlined, with a pair of thin wire rimmed glasses perched on his nose. He looked younger than Bucky did now. And he’d had a hand in turning him into the weapon he’d been. Maybe he’d wielded a scalpel. Or mixed up the serum they’d given him.

“I have to find him,” he said in a rough whisper.

“James -” she started to say.

“No. I need to talk to him. I need to ask him what they did to me. I need to look him in the eye.”

“You don’t need to ask him what they did.” For the first time he heard Amanda’s calm falter. “They cut your arm off at the shoulder, breaking the joint. Then they removed part of your scapula and pectoral-”

“Stop,” he said. “That’s not-”

She leaned back on the couch, crossing her arms and continued. “They laced circuitry and electrodes into the remaining chest and back muscle. Before that, Zola had several different formulas he was working on. Each injection would have been paired with some sort of electroshock.”

“Goddammit, Amanda.”

Relentlessly, she kept going. “Whatever he was working on wouldn’t have been sufficient, so you would have gotten more treatments after the arm was put on, so that your body wouldn’t reject it. That would have been beyond injections and more like transfusions with sustained-”

“Shut _up_.” He slammed a fist into the paper strewn coffee table and it cracked in half, sending the pictures and files to the floor.

He stared at the mess, shocked out of his anger by the violence. That wasn’t him. That wasn’t even something the Soldier would have done, he didn’t get angry. That had been some blend of the two of them. Bucky’s emotion with the Soldier’s menace.

Silence reigned a moment, so complete he could hear Amanda breathing, slow and steady. She was the one who spoke first, calm and quiet once again. “You know what. I can tell you how. Those aren’t really the questions you want to ask, are they?”

Suddenly he felt exhausted and sick. He’d thought he’d put it behind him, had tried to focus on his future. With the team, with Amanda. And the faintest hint of a road to his past and he was going nuts. But he didn’t feel like he could stop. Because there was one question he needed answered. 

“Why?” He barely recognized his voice, it was so rough and strained. “Why me? Why did it work on me when it failed on so many other people?”

She touched his back, hesitantly at first, then firmer, with her palm flat on his shoulder. “You know there might not be a why, right? At least not one that will bring your any satisfaction.” He didn’t respond - didn’t know how - and she leaned a little closer. “You don’t have to do this. Let’s tell Hill, or send the information to the new SHIELD. Let them find him and deal with him the way they’re doing the rest of Hydra.”

It was the right answer. The smart, responsible, Avenger team member answer. “I can’t,” he said roughly. “I can’t just pass it on and go about my life knowing he’s out there. Knowing he could tell me - I just can’t let this go, Amanda.” He looked at her. “I’m sorry.”

Her mouth thinned out into a disapproving, almost angry, line. She kept her hand on him but looked away a moment, off towards her bookshelves and the framed pictures there. He wished for a moment her could read her thoughts, know what she was thinking. So he could prepare himself if this was the thing that divided them.

Finally, she spoke, in her brisk, efficient doctor voice, “I want you to understand, I think this is a terrible idea. It’s going to set back what progress you’ve made and upset you. We’re probably going to end up in some dive bar in San Francisco trying to find the exact proof of alcohol that actually gives you a faint buzz. Which is not my idea of a good night.”

He frowned at her. “San Francisco?”

She sighed and leaned over, rummaging in the mess that had been her coffee table. “That’s where he’s going to be tomorrow night.” She found a little tri-fold brochure and handed it to him. It was an ad for a science and medicine seminar being held in San Francisco. “He’s running a symposium about manufactured viruses,” Amanda explained. “I was invited to speak about the serum but declined since I knew we’d be starting the animal trials. But I called this evening and was able to get tickets for myself and a guest. We have an eight am flight, so we should get to sleep.”

Bucky stared at Hesse’s name in the brochure a moment, then looked at her. “You set it all up. Before I came home. You knew I’d want to go see him.”

Her smile was small and crooked, but genuine. “I hoped you wouldn’t. That you’d let me tell someone else. But I didn’t think it was likely. Hesse is notoriously private. I figured if we didn’t catch him in California he’d be in the wind and you’d have no leads. So.” She shrugged, almost self consciously.

He swallowed hard. “You don’t have to come.”

Light fingers sifted through his hair and her smile widened and softened. “Yes, I do. You shouldn’t be alone for this.” Her fingers stilled and she hesitated. “Unless you’d prefer Steve. But I can get you in the conference without suspicion-”

He reached out and yanked her into his arms, crushing her tight against his chest. “No. No, I want you to come.” He pressed his face into her hair and took a deep breath. “Thank you.” The words were too small to convey everything he was feeling, but it was something.

Her arms snaked around him and she gave him a tight squeeze. “You’re welcome. Now come to bed, we can still get a couple hours sleep before our flight.”

Bucky didn’t sleep well, though Amanda seemed to get enough hours to be functional when the alarm went off. She had packed for them the night before and had JARVIS call for a car to take them to the airport. Flying commercial was an experience in its own right. Amanda had written up some sort of official medical letter to explain his arm and they wanded him and ushered him through without a problem.

He did doze a bit on the plane, leaning on the closed window. His dreams were a tangle of ice and blood and strange voices in other languages. He woke up to Amanda gripping his arm tightly, whispering words of comfort. He didn’t try to sleep again until they were in California.

The conference was being held in a huge convention center in the middle of the city. All the hotels nearby were booked, but she’d found something a few miles north, in the financial district. It was aimed at businessmen and was fairly utilitarian inside, but even Bucky had to admit the view was breathtaking, with the city sprawling out before him and the bay beyond. You could probably see the Golden Gate from some of the other rooms.

Amanda had mapped out the conference schedule for him and they’d both agreed the best time to strike would be during the evening vendor hours. Hesse’s seminar ended right beforehand and he would almost certainly take a circuit through the booths to see what was being sold. Amanda assured him doctors liked new toys almost as much as Stark did. They pulled up floor plans for Moscone Center on her laptop but he fell asleep halfway through plotting. On any other mission that would have been a sign he should rethink his plan, but he was committed. He’d never been this close to answers before and he wasn’t going to back out now.

And now he was standing in a warehouse sized room full of doctors, scientists and medical equipment. “I think this might be my version of hell,” he told her dryly.

Amanda sighed wistfully. “I know. All those machines and I can’t stop and browse.” He gave her a look and she grinned at him. “Do you want to split up? Cover more ground?”

“I don’t know, are you going to get distracted window shopping?”

She stuck her lip out in a little pout. “Probably not.”

He leaned over and kissed her brow. “Be good and I’ll let you come back later.”

“Thank you, dear.” She scanned the crowd. “I’ll take right you take left? I’ll call if I spot him.”

She had a point about covering more ground. But she was an unarmed noncombatant and he had no idea what kind of skills Hesse had. For all they knew he’d brought a platoon of Hydra soldiers with him.

_Well, you should have thought of that before you came out here with just her for back up._

Bucky blew out a breath and nodded, resisting the urge to kiss her again. “Be careful and cautious. No tackling him if you think he’s getting away.”

“I promise,” she said, holding up three fingers in a vow. She used the fingers to blow him a kiss and strolled off to the right. She blended in to the crowd almost immediately and he sighed, turning away. Time to get to work.

He did not blend. He feigned interest in some of the equipment he passed, but it all made him vaguely uncomfortable. It was funny, Amanda’s labs never bothered him, nor had being under her care when he was shot. She had a habit of explaining what things were before he even asked. Knowing the gas mask with the plastic bag on the end was for aiding respiration instead of restricting it eased any worry he might feel. Now he was surrounded by tables covered in strange tools and equipment. One sign boasted it was the future of syringes and he gave it a wide berth. He was never going to find Hesse in all this.

He found himself glancing up at the girders and rafters. Maybe if he could get up, get a bird’s eye view. He wished he’d brought his sniper rifle. Then he reminded himself he didn’t want Hesse _dead_. At least not until he’d gotten some answers.

Dammit, he got stressed and the Soldier’s instincts started to kick in. This was a mess. If he was smart he’d find Amanda and get the hell out of here, think of a better plan. Call Hill or Steve or even Director Coulson and sort this out properly. 

His phone buzzed on his hip and he glanced down. Amanda. He let out a long breath and smiled a little. Maybe she wouldn’t even say I told you so.

“Hey, I’m beginning to think you were right about this being a terrible idea.”

“I’m sure that will be a great relief to your woman, Herr Soldier,” said a male, accented voice on the other end of the line.

Bucky froze. He might not have remembered the face but that voice sent chills down his spine. “Hesse,” he growled. “How did you get this phone?”

“I should think that would be quite obvious. Your woman is not the predator that you are. Quite easy to sneak up on. Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize you? A man tends to remember his greatest success. Even when he gets as old as I am.”

Despite the rage and mounting panic, Bucky wondered exactly how pissed Amanda was getting at being referred to as “his woman.” “Where are you?” he asked, instinctively scanning the crowd.

“I assumed you wanted to have a private conversation. We are in room 133, in Hall E. There are plenty of signs, I’m sure you’ll find it.”

He checked the ceiling and walls, spotted a sign and arrow for Hall E and started for it. “You need to give me some sort of assurance that Amanda is all right. Or you can forget conversation and I’m going to ram my arm right up-”

“Colorful.” There was a pause and shuffling noise and Hesse’s voice, softer and muffled. “Say hello.”

“James?” Amanda’s voice sounded shaky but not panicked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see him until he grabbed me.”

“It’s all right, darlin’. Did he hurt you?”

“No. He shoved me around a bit, but nothing bad.”

He let out a breath and moved through the double doors to Hall E, which appeared to be just a row of small and medium sized conference rooms. “Good. I’ll be there in a second.”

“He’s unarmed but he’s stronger than he should be,” she added in a rush. “And he’s alone.” There was a distant, muffled German curse and Amanda gave a little grunt and the phone cut out. 

He sprinted the last few feet to the door of room 133 and slammed through it. Inside, he found Hesse, wearing a crisp, well tailored suit. Next to him was Amanda, leaning on the wall, holding her stomach as if she’d been punched.

Rage, white hot and blinding, over took him in that moment. He strode forward and grabbed Hesse around the neck with his cybernetic hand and slammed him into the wall a few feet from Amanda. For that moment he didn’t give a shit about his past or getting answers. He just knew that this man had hurt her and he was going to pay for that.

Then Hesse, red-faced and choking, managed to gasp out a sentence. “For the good of the many, a few must die.”

And Bucky’s mind went completely blank.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That cliffhanger was mean, so I'm giving you a bonus chapter. I'm a kind and benevolent author. :)

“What the hell did you do to him?” Amanda’s stomach ached and if she straightened too much she felt the distinct and urgent need to vomit. Hesse might look like a grandpa who had hard candies in his pockets and grumbled about the features of his smart phone, but he had a punch like a prize fighter. It wasn’t what Steve or James could have done to her - she was fairly certain a punch from either of them would rupture the organs of a normal person - but it hurt like a bitch. She was trying to ignore it now, though, because whatever Hesse had just said had caused James to release his throat and step back, a lost, confused look on his face. It wasn’t the icy blankness of the Solider, but it wasn’t James anymore either. It was something new, something heartbreakingly sad.

Hesse chuckled, rubbing his throat where James had held him. “Honestly, Dr. Newbury, did you really think we would build a weapon of his caliber and not install a safety?”

She ignored the fact he knew her name and zeroed in on the real problem. “He has a trigger phrase?” That hadn’t been in any of the files she’d read. And she was fairly certain she’d read them all now. Either there was more information on the Soldier that no one was aware of, or there was information that they had never put down on paper. Either option was troubling.

“He has several,” Hesse said, looking at James like he was a particularly interesting specimen of bug. 

Right. She was going to deal with that later. “What is the matter with you? With all of you? He was a human being and you turned him into an experiment. You were doctors. Some of you had to be doctors. You took an oath to do no harm and you did nothing _but_ harm.”

The German doctor finally looked at her. “Harm? We made him remarkable. Stronger. Faster. All but immortal. We made him the perfect weapon. How can you call it harm?”

Impotent fury throbbed through her, clenching her jaw and her fists. “He’s not a weapon. He’s a _person_.”

Hesse laughed softly. “I think you’ll find, once I order him to kill you and take him back to Hydra, that there is far more weapon than man in him.” He tipped his head back thoughtfully. “Though perhaps I’ll let the man surface, just a little. So that he knows what he’s done. He’s so much easier to control when he has nothing to live for.”

_Punch through the bag._ James’s advice rang clear in her head as she lifted her fist, pulled it back and slammed it into Hesse’s face.

The blow sent him reeling back, where he cracked his head on the wall and dropped like a broken doll. The impact jarred her arm all the way up to her shoulder. But the sound his head made when it struck the wall was immensely satisfying. She stood over him a moment, watching his respiration to make sure he was unconscious and not faking it, then she turned back to James.

He didn’t seem at all perturbed that she’d knocked Hesse out. But he still had the blank, empty look on his face. “James?” His eyes met hers and a faint line of confusion appeared between his brows. It was enough of a reaction to encourage her to try again. “Jamie, do you remember me?” She made to reach out to him and he flinched away as if expecting a blow.

She felt her stomach drop. She hissed a curse under her breath and covered her eyes with her hand. “Dammit. Dammit, dammit.” She paced away a couple steps. James watched her, but still didn’t respond.

“Okay, focus. Pull it together.” There seemed to be no harm in talking out loud. He didn’t seem to care and the sound of her voice made her feel a little less alone. She looked at him again and pushed down all the grief and panic. This was bad. It was so bad. This was worse than he’d been when he came to the Tower. There was no hint of James in his gaze at all, just a blank slate. There was no telling if she’d be able to get him back at all. Or if he’d remember the last year if she did.

_Stop. Just stop. That’s not a problem you can fix now. Worry about right now and nothing else._

If calm wouldn’t come she’d just pretend she had it until it was true. “Okay,” she repeated and she sounded calmer, which was something. “I’ll call Steve. He might get through to you like he did before. Worst case, he can get a plane here and we can go home.”

His head tilted at the mention of Steve’s name and his eyes narrowed slightly, as if lost in thought. Amanda decided that was a good sign and pressed on. Hesse had her phone and she didn’t feel like frisking him right now. James had dropped his phone when he came into the room, it was laying over by the door. She took a step towards it.

James stopped her with a hand on her hip. She froze and looked up at him and found him staring at her waist, as if he was trying to see through the fabric of her slacks. “‘On breach thereof, may the reverse be my fate.’” His voice was soft and thoughtful as he recited the words inked on her skin.

Her breath came out of her in a rush. “What - My tattoo? You remember my tattoo?”

“Rod of Asclepius,” he said, stroking a finger down her thigh, right where the tattoo ran. His raised his gaze to hers. “I know you.”

Tears burned the backs of her eyes. “Yes. Yes, you know me.” She reached out and touched his upper arm and this time he didn’t flinch. “You’re name is James Buchanan Barnes. And I love you.”

He jerked backwards sharply and shook his head, lifting his hand to press his fingers against his temple. When he looked back at her his eyes were clear and he was giving her a very familiar grin. “‘Manda.”

With a wordless sound of relief, she flung her arms around him. He caught her, lifting her off her feet a little with the force of his embrace. The tears that had threatened to spill earlier finally did so, and she pressed her face into the side of his neck to hide it.

“I got you,” he whispered, rubbing her back and rocking her. He buried his own face in her hair, letting out a shuddery breath. After a few moments he said, “I love you, too,” very softly.

Amanda sniffled and leaned back, taking her glasses off so she could scrub at her eyes. “This is not how I pictured us saying that for the first time.”

“No unconscious Nazi scientist at our feet?” he asked dryly and she couldn’t help but laugh. James leaned back and brushed some of her hair out of her eyes before kissing her. “That was a hell of a punch.”

Startled, she looked at his face. They were close enough she didn’t need the glasses. “You were aware of what was going on?”

His brow furrowed a little but he nodded. “It was. . . fuzzy. I could hear you two and knew what was happening, but I had no connection to it. I didn’t know who either of you were, but I had the sense I _should_. When you mentioned Steve it cleared a little and then when you said. . . Well, it all fell into place.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cry before.”

She sniffled inelegantly and rubbed at her eyes again before sliding the glasses on. “I’m not crying, I don’t cry. I had those parts removed ages ago.”

He smiled softly and she made a silent vow to never take that smile for granted. Not for one moment of her life. “So what’s this, then?” he asked, touching her red nose.

“Allergies. Lots of dust in this room.”

“Of course.” He looped his arm around her and hugged her again.

She sank against his chest with a sigh. With a little maneuvering she settled against him so that she could hear his heartbeat, steady and sure and comforting. Over his shoulder, she could see Dr. Hesse still sprawled on the ground. “You can’t interrogate him,” she said softly. “Not if he can turn off your brain off with a few words.”

His fingers were toying with the end of her hair. It had come out of its twist when Hesse had dragged her in here. James seemed to find playing with it soothing so she hadn’t bothered to tuck it back up. “I know. This was a bad idea. I’ll just call Director Coulson to pick him up.”

She could hear the disappointment in his voice, the frustration. She knew how much he wanted to get answers. How long he’d looked for someone who could give them to him. And now he had him at his fingertips and he wouldn’t be able to find out a damn thing. Because the awful things they’d done to him seemed to have no end.  
“I’ll do it,” she said, and was surprised to hear real anger in her voice.

“Darlin’ I can’t ask you-”

“You didn’t ask. I’m offering. I can do this. You deserve to have your questions answered.”

He was silent a moment, still twisting her hair. “I’m not going to leave you alone with him. No matter how we tie him up.”

She hadn’t been looking forward to that part either. “You had somewhere you were going to take him to interrogate him, right?” He nodded. “We’ll all go. You can hide behind him where he can’t see you. He won’t know you’re there, but you’ll be able to hear everything.”

“What if he doesn’t want to answer your questions?”

James had probably been planning to torture Hesse. She didn’t know that she had it in her to start pulling fingernails out. But there were a lot of ways to encourage a person to talk.

She finally stepped back and affected a brisk, confident tone. “Leave that to me. He has my phone in his pocket. I’ll take yours. Text me the location of wherever you take him to and I’ll meet you there in an hour or so.”

He looked utterly perplexed. “Where are you going to go?”

“I have some things I need to get.”

_Two hours later, in an empty building near the Bay_

When Amanda did her surgical rotation she’d been assigned to Dr. Pike. Good teacher, excellent surgeon. Not particularly warm and friendly, at least until he’d gotten to know you. They’d gotten along well, neither being one for small talk. Before her first time as lead surgeon he’d given her a piece of advice she’d carried with her the rest of her residency and on to her career. It was a touch stone for her when she was about to do something she found overwhelming.

_”Surgery is difficult. There is no margin for error and things go wrong in a blink of an eye. You can’t think. If you start thinking about your actions then you’ll get tangled up in your head and fuck everything up. You need to find the calm, still place inside yourself and live there. Let your knowledge and your hands do their thing. When your patient is closed up and in recovery then you can second guess yourself and fall apart. But when a person’s life is in your hands you need to be in that calm, still spot.”_

Amanda knew all about the calm, still place. Hers was frozen solid, with walls strong and sharp as diamonds. It was why she’d gone into emergency medicine, why she was a good surgeon. It was so easy to slip into that place inside her. Sometimes she thought she’d lived most of her life there. At least until James had come along and cracked it open. The pieces were still there, though. And anger made excellent mortar.

Sitting across from Dr. Hesse as he came to, she rebuilt the calm, still place and settled into it, turning off the part of her that was afraid and uncertain. James was in the shadows behind the doctor, hidden from even her view. She couldn’t even hear him breathing, but that might have had to do with how loud her own heart was pounding. 

Hesse lifted his head finally and blinked at her. She waited silently as he studied her in confusion, then watched recognition and memory flood his features. He jerked his arms against his bonds, but James had tied him quite effectively. She let him struggle, waiting patiently until the old man looked at her again. “I have some questions for you,” she said quietly.

His mouth worked a moment. “I’ve nothing to say to you.”

She tilted her head, studying him. “Tell me, doctor, what do you see when you look at me?”

He spat and she shifted her foot slightly to avoid the spatter. “A woman. Weak and frail.”

So predictable. Amanda shook her head. “I don’t know why men say that. Call women weak. Women have enormous strength.” She leaned forward, as if sharing a secret with him. “You know what I think?” she asked, tapping his knee and making him jump. “I think men like you tell women we’re weak because you’re terrified of what we’d do if we stopped believing it. _I_ think that if they’d given Peggy Carter the serum the war would have been over in a week.”

“Is this how you’re going to get me to talk? Bore me to death?”

She smiled thinly. “No. I’m going to torture you.”

He stared at her a moment, then started to laugh. “You? Who lectured me on the ethics of medicine? You’re going to break bones and cut flesh?” He shook his head. “I hardly think so.”

Shaking her head, she stood and walked out of his eye line, returning with two metal trays. “Who said anything about broken bones? There are so many ways to torture, some without spilling a drop of blood.” She sat again and placed the trays on the floor on either side of her. “I’m going to use your own body to torture you.” He looked at the rows of syringes on each tray, then looked back at her warily.

“This tray,” she said, pointing to the one on her right. “Is a combination of Midazolam and Hydroxyzine. A sedative cocktail. It will relax you, slow your heart beat and generally make you pleasantly drowsy.” She pointed at the other tray. “These needles are adrenaline, which will send your heart into overdrive, waking you instantly. If you don’t tell me what I want to know I’m going to inject you with the sedative, wait twenty minutes so you get nice and relaxed, then inject you with the adrenaline. I will do that again and again until I have the answers I want.” She paused to let the implications of that set in. “I trust you’re enough of a doctor to realize how very unpleasant that’s going to be.”

He was breathing harshly now, but his voice sounded calm when he spoke. “I’ve had the serum. I can handle extreme physical-”

“You had a small dose of the serum,” she said. “Enough to prolong your life, slow your aging. Save you from whatever caused that limp you have. But it didn’t give you all the super strength and endurance did it?” His gaze flicked away from hers, answer enough. She leaned forward and tapped his chest. “That heart’s been pumping away ninety years. I imagine you’ll last longer than I would under these circumstances. But not by much. It’ll be an interesting experiment. You like those, don’t you?”

“You can’t do this,” he protested. “Your precious oath, remember? Do no harm.”

She leaned forward. “That only applies to humans,” she told him, voice gone dark and soft. “And I don’t think that’s what you are. You gave up the title when you took a wounded soldier and you cut into him. Experimented on him. _Erased_ him. Until he was a shell that you and your superiors could use for your own purposes.” She smiled nastily. “If I were a stronger person I would take you back to my lab and I would do to you _exactly_ what you did to him. Over and over again. Until you were an empty shell. So tell me, Herr Doctor, aren’t you glad I’m a weak and frail woman now?”

He stared at her and she held his gaze, letting him see the hard edges of her calm, still place. She should be afraid of him, of what she’d just said, what she was willing to do. But she wasn’t, not now. That was for later, when the job was done. Right now, she didn’t feel anything at all.

When she had counted to one hundred and he still hadn’t answered, she started to reach for a syringe.

“What do you want to know?” he asked in a defeated rasp.

Her smile was cold and cruel when she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “We’ll start at the beginning. Let’s talk about James Barnes.”

From there is was fairly anticlimactic. His answers were what she had expected them to be. There was nothing discernibly special about James. Whatever Zola had done to him had failed on others. It was possible James had gotten a different formula or a smaller dose, but much of that information had been lost when Red Skull had blown the base. For her own edification they went through the arm surgery and the supplementary serums, some of which he had responded poorly to. 

To her relief, he confirmed there were no other successful serum recipients, at least to his knowledge. It was obvious Hydra didn’t even trust their own people and it was possible other teams had had their own successes. Amanda doubted that was the case, though. Hesse and his group had made the Winter Soldier, one of the best weapons the world had ever seen, it would have been stupid to not involve them in other experiments. 

She went over every question James had, every follow up she could think of. In the shadows, James was running a recording app on her phone, making a record of everything Hesse said. Hesse refused to answer her questions about other Hydra doctors who might be alive and working on serum replication. She had no doubt there was a snake version of her, somewhere, and while it would be nice to go shut them down, it wasn’t her job to fix the world.

It was getting late, her calm, still place was cracking under the strain, and she didn’t think there was anything else she could get out of this interrogation. Still, she asked one last question.

“Why virology?”

He glared at her, looking as tired as she felt. He was starting to sag against his bonds, as if he no longer had the strength to sit up under his own power. “What?” he asked in return.

“Virology. Your new specialty. Why? I assume you’re still trying to replicate the serum. What does virology have-”

“I’m done talking,” he snapped. It was the most emotion he’d shown since he’d started answering questions. “Do what you want.”

Ah well. It had been an idle curiosity. She pulled a pressure syringe out of her pocket, leaned over and jammed it in his neck. He flinched and stiffened, but the sedative worked almost immediately and he slumped bonelessly to the side.

Slowly, she stood and skirted the unconscious Nazi and went to where James was hiding. He stepped out of the shadows and enveloped her in a hug without a word. She buried her face in his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his waist, holding on as tight as she could. He was a super soldier, he could take it.

She felt his metal hand come up and cup the back of her head, petting her pony tail in long, slow strokes. She appreciated the fact he didn’t ask if she was all right or try to reassure her. After a while, she realized she needed to be the first one to speak so she mustered up her sense of humor and shifted away enough to mutter, “That supervillain thing is looking better all the time.”

He snorted a surprised laugh. “I bet I’d make a good henchman.”

“Only if I can put you in a skimpy outfit.” All right. Time to move onto the next thing. The night was far from over. “What should we do with him?”

James rubbed her back briskly. “Leave him to me.”

She leaned back to look at him. “Are you going to kill him?”

He studied her face. “Do you want me to?”

Shaking her head, she answered, “I’m not the one he hurt. You do whatever you want to him, I won’t judge.”

Smiling a little at her words, he tugged her into a hug again. “Go back to the hotel. I’ll handle clean up and be there as soon as I can.”

Part of her wanted to argue, to try to see this through to the end. The rest of her could acknowledge that body disposal and crime scene clean up was not her forte. And a shower and pajamas sounded downright heavenly right now. “Be careful,” she told him, kissing his cheek.

“I promise. I’ll see you soon.”

She nodded and took a few steps away, then stopped to turn back. “You’re sure you’re all right? The memory is working? No big blank spots for you to fall into?”

The affection in his smile speared right through her. “My names is James Buchanan Barnes,” he said. “My best friend is Steven Grant Rogers. I’m an Avenger stationed in New York City. I like butterscotch lollypops. You’re my girlfriend, though neither of us is entirely comfortable with the term. Your middle name is Miriam. You can’t cook for shit. You drink tea, not coffee. You named your lab rats after famous generals. You’re extremely ticklish where you leg meets your-”

She slapped a hand over his mouth. “Okay. Point proven.”

He kissed her palm and tugged her hand away to kiss her mouth. “I’ll be fine. Go back to the hotel, text me when you get to the room so I know you’re safe.” She nodded, suddenly too full of emotion to speak, then squeezed his hand and walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The torture technique Amanda uses is real, as are the drugs she lists. I've taken liberties with their strength and I'm not entirely sure they work as injections. Chalk it up to not wanting to give a how-to guide on torture :)
> 
> I do, by the way, think she'd make a hell of a super villain.


	20. Chapter 20

It took a good two hours to clean up the interrogation site and deal with Hesse. The clock in the hotel lobby read quarter after eleven when Bucky made his way to the elevator. To him, it felt later. Amanda had looked exhausted when he’d sent her off and he half wondered if she’d be asleep when he got to their room. She’d texted him, like he’d asked, so he knew she’d gotten here safely. WIth Hesse taken care of, he couldn’t imagine what danger their might be for her. But with the surprises they’d had in the last couple of days he hadn’t wanted to take any chances.

The lights were off when he let himself into the room, but a glance told him that the bed was empty. Instead of sleeping, Amanda was tucked in a chair by the window. She’d turned a chair away from the little table designed for businessmen to work at and set it to face the view of the city. She didn’t look up at him, not even when he moved the other chair and set it next to hers.

Her hair was damp, laying heavy against her shoulders and back. She kept it tied back or pinned up as a general rule and he rarely got to see it completely down. It probably wasn’t the time to play with it right now, though. She was in his star pajamas, though, and he took that as a good sign.

“What did you do with Hesse?” she asked quietly.

“Tied him up, left him on a dry dockd boat, called Coulson to send someone to come get him.” She turned to look at him, obviously surprised. “He wasn’t worth killing.” That earned him a little smile, even as she turned back to look at the view.

For the first time since he’d met her, he thought she looked old. In this day and age, thirty seven wasn’t old. It wasn’t even middle aged. But whatever Hesse had done and Amanda had broken had shaken some things loose in his head. Large chunks of his life before the war. Meeting Steve, the fights he’d pulled him out of, the dates he’d tried to set him up on. The women Bucky had gone out with himself. He didn’t have any emotional connection to them, not really. It was like hearing stories about someone he’d been friends with once upon a time, but didn’t talk to much anymore. It was enough to confirm what he’d suspected, that the man he’d been wouldn’t have given Amanda the time of day.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. He probably would have liked her smarts and she sarcasm. They might have been friends. But never more than that. That Bucky would have found her too old, too plain, to hard edged. He wouldn’t have appreciated the strength she had at her core. The way she could comfort without pitying. The way she could yank him out of his shell before he realized what she was up to. He’d had no scars to compare. No broken pieces he could fit in amongst hers. 

Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep or got lost in his thoughts while working out, he wondered at the life he might have had. The path he’d have taken without Hydra. What might have been if Steve hadn’t gotten the serum and Bucky had never been captured. Or if it had all gone the way it had and he just hadn’t fallen off that train. If he’d seen the war through to the end and gone home. Would he had settled down with some girl? Taken up his dad’s trade. Gotten an apartment or a house out in the suburbs. Two kids, two cars, a dog and a picket fence. It seemed so foreign to him now. Appealing in a vague, fantasy sort of way. Maybe he would have liked it. Maybe it would have made him happy and brought him peace. If he’d never known anything else. 

He wasn’t that man, though. He had a great deal in common with him. Their senses of humor were compatible. Their work ethic. Their love of sweet food and solid furniture. But the Bucky who lived now wouldn’t be happy with the sweet fifties house wife and the picket fence. He far preferred his prickly doctor in a Manhattan sky scraper. And right now, he had the sick, awful feeling that he might be losing her.

“‘Manda?” he tried, voice gentle. “You okay?”

She sighed and took a long, slow breath, filling her lungs. She didn’t look away from the window, but her voice didn’t sound angry or grieved. “You know, Romanov is probably the best field medic on your team? Banner could treat illness or a broken arm or something. But Romanov’s skill set is closer to mine. Emergency medicine. She kept you alive ling enough to get to my OR. So, she spends most of her time being a killer, but when someone she cares for needs it, she can heal.”

He wasn’t exactly sure where this was going, but he waited in silence as she continued. “I meant what I threatened him with. I’d have given him those shots, let his heart give out. I honestly didn’t care what he said or didn’t say. I wanted to hurt him for what he did to you. When I got back here and finally let myself think about it, it upset me. Then I thought about Romanov.”

She looked over at him. “Maybe I can just be someone who usually heals, but if someone I care about needs it, I can hurt, as well.”

Bucky reached out and put his arms around her, drawing her head down to his shoulder. “No one is ever entirely one thing or another. You’re strong. Sometimes strong means fighting.” He’d learned that in the war, long before Zola and the treatment. It was the only way a scared kid from Brooklyn could make it through a battle, a war.

“People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf,” she replied. He thought that was a quote, but couldn’t recall where he’d heard of read it. She lifted her head and kissed his brow. “I’m not all right, but I’m confident I will be soon. I think that’s enough for tonight.” She touched his cheek lightly. “What about you? You didn’t get any answers.”

Not entirely true. Hesse had answered questions, all the ones he’d told her to ask. But the answers hadn’t been what Bucky wanted to hear. Hadn’t put any of his demons to rest. He’d put them both in danger for the chance to interrogate Hesse and all he’d gotten were “I don’t knows.”

He pressed a kiss against her temple. “I’ll admit, I hoped he would magically solve all of my problems and make me feel like the years of being treated like a-a _thing_ actually had a purpose. It would have made my life a lot easier. It would be a nice end to the story.” He sighed. “But that’s not how it works. I should have known better.”

Amanda leaned on him, giving him some of her weight. “So now what?”

“Now? Now I stop worrying about the past and start building my future. I have the team. I have you. I have Steve. I have friends. I have a job and a purpose. My past will always be there. It’s coming back bit by bit. Steve still loves to tell me stories and I have the boxes you brought me. That’s all the answers I need.” He pressed his face into her hair a moment, inhaling the minty scent of her shampoo. “I love you,” he murmured. “As long as I know that I don’t need to know anything else.”

He could hear the smile in her voice when she replied, “I’ll be happy to remind you.”

With his own smile curving his mouth, he leaned back to kiss her. “I might need a little reminder right now.”

Her arms wound around his neck and she chuckled against his mouth. “Oh. Really?”

“Mmmhmm.” He reached out and scooped her up, lifting her out of her chair and tucking her against his chest. She snuggled into his body, holding on as he carried her over to the bed.

They undressed each other by the glow of the city coming in through the window, street lights casting a golden glow on her skin as it was revealed. He dropped kisses along her collarbone and the tops of her breasts as she tangled her hands in his hair. Her kisses were eager, passionate and he responded in kind. They weren’t in the mood for slow and careful. It had been a hellish day and they had almost lost each other. Now was the time to reaffirm life and reassure themselves they were both alive and whole.

If he never remembered another woman in his life it wouldn’t matter. She was enough. His prickly, pain-in-the-ass doctor. Who accepted him whole heartedly. Who would fight and kill for him. Their lives would never be easy or simple. He was a superhero. She was a doctor for his team and worked on research that could change the world. There would be crises and injuries. They would fight, probably loudly, but then they would make up. It was more than he could have hoped to have when Steve found him in that dirty bar more than a year ago.

When he took her mouth in a deep, rough kiss and slowly sank into her wet heat it was like coming home. And it was so, so much more than he every thought he’d have.

Afterwards, he curled around her protectively and fell asleep to the soft sound of her breathing.

He woke a few hours later, suddenly aware he was alone in bed. The sky outside the window was silvery grey, the sunrise happening somewhere behind them. Amanda sat at the table, hunched over the laptop, scrolling through something. Her brow was furrowed and she was staring at the screen intently.

Bucky pushed his hair back off his face, wondering how worried he should be about this. “‘Manda?”

She jumped a little and looked up. “Sorry. Did I wake you? I was trying to be quiet.”

“No. Well, yeah, but you weren’t making noise. What are you doing?”

Her face lit up with a grin. “I figured it out.”

He blinked a moment, utterly confused. “Figured what out?”

“Virology.” She didn’t wait for him to asked more confused clarification. “I couldn’t figure that out, why Hesse moved on to virology. Even if Hydra was trying to manufacture weaponized viruses, why have him do it? He called you his greatest success, why wouldn’t he spend the rest of his rather extended life trying to replicate? And then I realized he was.”

“With viruses?” He was probably too tired to follow this conversation, but she was so adorably excited he was going to try.

She nodded and nudged her laptop away to face him more fully. “The serum I developed is designed to function as a secondary immune system, fighting illnesses that the host’s system can’t handle. But it works separately from the host’s system and is self replicating. That’s where I went wrong. By being outside the host system it didn’t function as an immunity boost but as an invading army. The self replication went unchecked which caused the cancer growth. The key has to be integrating it with the host body, that’s what Hesse was working on.”

At the risk of being repetitive, he said, “With viruses?” again.

“Viruses can live in the body long after the illness passes. There’s antibodies, which is how vaccines and immunity works. But there are also viruses that attach to cells in the body and stick around, causing later flare ups. Herpes is the most common. Its why only people who had chicken pox can get shingles. Viruses stay with us long after the immune system stops fighting it. That’s how I can get the serum to attach without running the risk of cancerous reaction.”

Most vaccines had come into being after Bucky had gone in the ice, he’d learned about them in Steve’s crash course on the twenty first century. He remembered just enough of Steve’s constant illnesses to find the idea of preventing horrible diseases with a shot rather miraculous. “So you’d be. . . immunizing people with super soldier serum?”

She looked positively delighted that he’d followed along with her explanation. “Essentially, yes. I thought when the rats all died I’d have to start from scratch, but I think the basis of my serum is fine. It’s just the delivery method I need to tweak. I had half the solution, Hesse was obviously working on the other half. Put them together. . .” She shook her head and grinned. “I need to find some virologists I can work with, it’s not my strength. But it’s doable. It’s a set back of months to a year and not years to a decade.”

“That’s great, darlin’.” He held his arm out. “Come back to bed.”

She held up a finger and tugged the laptop over again. “One minute, honey. I’m working on a short list for Hill and JARVIS to background check when we get home.”

Bucky laughed and shook his head, laying back down, resigning himself to the fact he’d be sleeping alone for the rest of the night. Maybe he, Pepper, and Thor could start the partners of insomniac geniuses club.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all knew the virology would come back! My knowledge of viruses is rudimentary at best, but I don't think anything in here is completely unbelievable, especially considering the MCU's 15-minutes-in-the-future tech.


	21. Epilogue

_April_

Amanda leaned her forehead on the plane’s window, watching New York glitter in the midmorning sun. There were some perks to working for Tony Stark and dating an Avenger. Access to Stark’s private jet was near the top of the list. Her last few months of candidate interviews would have been far less pleasant if she’d had to take all the flights commercial. Today she was coming home from London, though in the last two months she’d been to Atlanta, Vancouver, Tokyo, and Prague in her hunt for a reliable virologist to work with her on the serum. 

This would hopefully be the last trip, at least. Dr. Jones of the MRC National Institute for Medical Research had met her in Heathrow wearing a beaten up leather jacket joking about Archeology being too dangerous so he’d decided to handle viruses instead. She’d liked him immediately. His research dovetailed nicely with hers, he had no links to Hydra or any political parties. And he seemed to honestly want to help. Now it was just up to Stark and Pepper to convince him to uproot his life and come to New York as she couldn’t maintain this level of travel. Theoretically, they could work via email and Skype, but in person was greatly preferred. He’d seemed hesitant to move, but they said every man had a price and Amanda was pretty sure Stark could find it.

That was a problem for another day, though. Right now, they were taxiing in at Teterboro air field in New Jersey where a town car was waiting to drive her home. The hanger at the Tower only held Avenger quinjets. The private jet couldn’t maneuver into the gate. So she was stuck with a forty five minute drive before she was in her own place and filling James in on her adventures.

Two months ago, Barton and Natasha had finally admitted they were in a relationship and had agreed to consolidate apartments. From what Amanda had seen and heard they’d been together for ages and essentially co-habitating since moving into the Tower. Now it was official, and James had immediately laid claim to Barton’s now officially empty apartment. He had then just as immediately asked her to move in with him. Her response had been slightly less immediate, but he’d waited patiently while she processed it and two weeks later she, James, her lab assistants and the Avengers had carried their things up to the Avenger’s floor and moved them in. 

The apartment was far nicer than either of theirs had been, with a better view, a second bedroom and kitchen far too nice for her skills. She and Jane, after some very persuasive arguments from Darcy Lewis, Jane’s assistant, had decided that woman could not live on Poptarts and take-out alone and had started taking cooking classes together. She wasn’t entirely sure it was doing any good. The Saturday before she left for London she’d wrecked the kitchen making spaghetti and meatballs with sauce from scratch. James had eaten three servings and cleaned the kitchen for her afterwards, so she was at least going to see the lessons through to the end.

Finally, the Tower loomed above her. She thanked the driver when he dug her bag out of the trunk and headed inside, wheeled luggage rattling along behind her. The lobby receptionist waved at her as she passed on her way to the elevators. Amanda resisted hitting the button for the floor with the infirmary on it. Tiffani had been holding down the fort just fine. There was no reason to check in. There’d been no major emergencies and Amanda would be back on call in the morning with no trips in the foreseeable future. There had been brief talk of getting a second or back up doctor, but the suggestion had made several of the Avengers make faces, so they’d just made do with Tiffani and the lab assistants, plus some crossed fingers. She was greatly looking forward to getting back to her comfortable infirmary and familiar lab.

She was looking forward to her own couch and her own bed even more, though. She unlocked the apartment door and stepped in. Her bag could stay here until she had time to unpack and do laundry. She did lean her ass against the wall and take off her shoes because the plush, off white carpet still registered as too nice to walk on in dirty shoes. 

The TV was off and there was no clattering or anything coming from the kitchen. It was possible that James was in a meeting or out with Steve, but she called out his name anyway.

There was no immediate response, but he appeared in the doorway of the hallway to the bedrooms before she could reach it. He wrapped her in a tight, almost overly enthusiastic, hug. “Welcome home. I missed you.”

She leaned on him and took a deep breath of his scent. “I missed you, too.” She leaned back to kiss him, but stopped, studying his face. “What’s wrong?”

His brows went up and his eyes widened. “Nothing. I’m just glad to see you. Are you hungry? Why don’t we head down to the diner and get some lunch? Or is it dinner to you?”

He was trying to steer her towards the door and she dug her heels in, forcing him to stop or pick her up. “What have you done?”

“Amanda, I don’t know-”

“God, you are _terrible_ at hiding things. It’s hilarious.” She studied him again and noticed a white hair on the front of his dark grey shirt. She plucked it between thumb and forefinger. “What’s this?”

In an instant he became the largest in-trouble six year old on the planet. He all but scuffed his feet when he answered, “Nothing.”

Behind her, from the other end of the hallway, she heard a faint woof and scuffling noise. James winced and she narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. She didn’t bother asking him what the sound had been, just turned and walked down the hallway to the spare bedroom they used as a library/office/storage room. 

The furniture had been slightly rearranged. In the corner where there had been an old, in need of reupholstering chair, there was now a good sized dog crate, with a bed. Just outside the crate was a bowl of water and all but empty dog bowl. Lounging half in and out of the crate was a dog about the size of a small labrador, with the pointed nose and mottled coloring of a shepherd. It lifted its head when she came in and panted at her.

“You got a dog,” she said when she heard James come up behind her. The dog shifted and she saw that where his left foreleg should be there was a healing surgery scar and patch of growing fur. She sighed deeply, feeling whatever arguments she might have had disappear. “You got a three legged dog.”

James slid his arms around her slowly, as if sensing the fight go out of her. “You remember Tuesday Steve was on that morning show?” She nodded. “I went with him to keep him company and in the green room I met one of the other guests, who ran a rescue shelter for special needs animals. She had a blind dog with her for the show, but invited me to come see the shelter. So Steve and I went that afternoon and I met Lucky here and he seemed to like me.” She felt him press his face into her hair. “I didn’t think you’d mind too much.”

“What if I’m a cat person?” she asked lightly.

“There was a grumpy grey cat with one eye. Kind of reminded me of you. I told the lady we’d probably be back.”

Amanda laughed, because what else could you do when your cybernetic, super soldier boyfriend brought home a three legged dog without asking you? She realized the dog had gotten up and was nuzzling at her hand, so she scritched the top of his head a second before crouching down to pet him properly. “Do you have his medical-”

James was already holding a manila folder in front of her before she’d finished the sentence. She shifted to sit on the floor and opened it, scanning the information. Found with an old, poorly healed broken leg. Re-breaking and setting it properly hadn’t been an option. Surgery had been straight forward, no post-op complications or infections. Full recovery expected. The notes were concise but fairly thorough. She’d have preferred to talk to the surgeon herself, though. Maybe when they went back for the cat.

Lucky had laid his head in her lap and she was petting him idly. “He needs a new name. Lucky is so cliched.”

James crouched next to her to rumple the dog’s fur. “Tripod?” he offered.

“Too cutesy. I like the camera reference, though. Nikon? Canon?”

“Nah, Canon sounds like the weapon.” The dog rolled onto his back and James grinned, rubbing his belly roughly. “How about something World War II related? Normandy?”

She tilted her head, going through every bit of wartime trivia she knew. “Panzer? Like the tank?”

James contemplated it a moment, then nodded. “Panzer it is.” He looped his arm around her shoulders and she leaned into the heat of his body with a contented sigh. James pressed a little kiss into her forehead. “Thanks,” he murmured.

“Oh, like I was going to kick him out.” She patted Panzer’s flank. “Does he have enough toys and treats?”

“I think Panzer would be happy to assure you that he never has enough treats or toys.”

She laughed and leaned back to kiss him. “Well. Let’s take him for a walk and spoil him rotten.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finishing a fic is always a little bittersweet. I want you all to see the end of the journey, but on the other had, I don't want it to end. Thank you all for reading and taking the journey with me. The response to this fic has been amazing. I think it's very possible I'll be revisiting Bucky and Amanda someday with a new story. But for now we'll leave them where they are, content in the Tower and growing their army of special needs pets.


End file.
